Skip to main content
Main

Venison, Shoulder Of, Marinaded

A marinated venison shoulder with forcemeat stuffing, roasted and served with gravy and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison, Shoulder Of, Marinaded

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Mix the vinegar and black pepper together to create a marinade.

  2. Flatten the shoulder of venison on a table and place it with the neck in the marinade.

  3. Let the shoulder marinate for 12 hours.

Stuff and roast

  1. Mince the cut-off meat with the fat bacon, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  2. Spread the forcemeat inside the shoulder, roll it up, and bind it tightly.

  3. Roast the joint in the usual way for 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on size.

Serve

  1. Serve with strong unflavored gravy and a sweet or piquant sauce.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Venison + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Meat + nutmegtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,656 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison shoulder
Long marinating in vinegar tenderises the lean meat and gives it a tangy flavour.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade softens muscle fibres and adds a sharp, tangy note.
Fat bacon
Adds fat to the lean forcemeat, keeping it moist and juicy as it roasts.
Venison neck meat
Minced into the forcemeat, it provides the stuffing's body and binds the roll together.

The step that matters

Binding the rolled shoulder tightly. A loose roll lets the forcemeat shift and leave gaps during roasting. Tight binding keeps the stuffing compact so the joint cooks evenly and slices neatly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, venison, meat):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, venison, meat. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes