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Fawn, Roasted

Roasted fawn served with a sauce of mutton gravy, currant jelly, powdered sugar, and port or claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and venison work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fawn, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the fawn

  1. Lard, stuff, and truss the fawn like a hare.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and roast at 400°F (200°C), basting until half done.

  3. Remove the larding and paper, then baste liberally until fully cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the venison trimmings in mutton gravy for 5 minutes.

  2. Strain the gravy, then add currant jelly, powdered sugar, and port or claret.

  3. Serve the sauce hot in a tureen.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mutton + venisontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butter + venisontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Venison trimmings
Simmered in the gravy to add deep, meaty flavor to the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich gravy.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the acidity of the port or claret.
Port or claret
Adds acidity and wine aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Remove the larding and paper, then baste liberally until fully cooked. Once the paper and larding come off, the surface is exposed and can dry out. Frequent basting with the pan juices keeps the meat moist and helps it brown evenly as it finishes cooking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mutton, venison, sugar):

  1. Currantthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mutton, venison, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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