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Venison Roast

A roasted venison haunch served with a claret gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Venison Roast

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place a little hot water in the roasting pan and cut up the onion, laying it in the pan.

Roast

  1. Roast the venison haunch, basting often, for about 20 minutes per pound.

  2. When nearly done, add the claret and more butter, then baste again.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy and thicken it with flour.

  2. Season the gravy with cloves and mace.

  3. Serve the roast with currant jelly.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Venison haunch
Is the main cut of meat that forms the body of the roast.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and the meat stay moist while basting.
Claret
Adds acidity and flavour to the pan juices that become the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained pan juices into a smooth gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness that balance the rich, gamey meat.

The step that matters

Basting the roast often. Venison is very lean, so it can dry out quickly in the oven. Frequent basting with pan juices and butter keeps the surface moist and builds flavour and colour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, clove, mace, currant):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, clove, mace, currant. 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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