Skip to main content
Main

Larded Venison

A roast haunch of venison larded with pork fat, cooked in a gravy of butter, water, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Larded Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the roast haunch into a neat shape.

  2. Lard the trimmed haunch with strips of fat pork using a thin, sharp knife.

  3. Pour gravy over the meat. If no gravy is available, use a mixture of butter and water.

  4. Place the meat in a dripping pan and cover the pan with another pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Cover the trimmings and bits of bone from the venison with cold water and add the sliced onion to the water.

  2. Stew the gravy until it is reduced by half, then strain it.

  3. Season the strained gravy with pepper, currant jelly, catsup, and claret.

  4. Thicken the gravy slightly with browned flour, then boil the thickened gravy to mix well.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast or steam the covered pan for one hour.

  2. Pour the gravy gradually over the meat.

  3. Baste the meat abundantly for half an hour if large, with less time for a small roast, ensuring it does not dry out.

  4. When done, the meat should appear stewed rather than roasted.

  5. Serve the gravy in a sauceboat.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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
Forms the main body of the dish and is the meat that is larded and roasted.
Fat pork
Larding strips add fat that keeps the lean venison moist during cooking.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruity note to the gravy.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the reduced gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Covered roasting and basting. Venison is lean, so it dries out easily. Keeping the pan covered and basting with gravy adds moisture and protects the surface, so the meat stays tender rather than dry.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesRoast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipes