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Roast Venison

Roast venison seasoned with salt and pepper, covered with buttered paper or flour-water paste, roasted, browned, and served hot with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Roast Venison

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the venison and remove any hairs.

  2. Wipe it with a wet towel and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover with buttered paper or a paste made of flour and water to retain juices.

Roast and brown

  1. Roast in front of the fire for 20 minutes per pound.

  2. Remove the paper or paste and quickly brown the venison.

  3. For a frothy appearance, dredge with flour and baste with butter before browning.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
The main cut; its lean muscle sets the texture and flavour of the finished roast.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown and turn golden as it bastes.
Flour
Forms a paste or dredging coat that holds in juices and gives a frothy, crisp surface.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that cut through the rich, gamey meat.

The step that matters

Quickly brown the venison after removing the paper or paste. Venison is lean and dries out easily, so the roast should be finished with a quick, hot browning. Browning too slowly lets the meat dry out before a flavourful crust forms.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, flour, butter. 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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