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To Roast a Haunch of Venison

A roasted haunch of venison served with 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: Butter and flour 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 ↓

To Roast a Haunch of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the haunch

  1. Place the venison on a spit before a clear, steady fire.

  2. Cover it with thick paper to prevent burning and position it far enough from the fire to avoid browning too soon.

  3. Secure the paper with large darning needles.

  4. Turn the spit frequently and baste the meat with butter.

  5. Roast for about 2 hours, ensuring it is not overcooked.

  6. Optionally, baste with a mixture of melted butter and wine.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Make gravy from the trimmings by stewing them in a little water, adding drippings from the meat, and seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Serve 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Haunch of venison
Is the main cut of meat that makes up the whole dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the surface moist and golden while roasting.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter.
Currant jelly
Adds sweet-tart fruitiness that balances the rich, gamey meat.

The step that matters

Keep the roast from overcooking. Venison is very lean, so it dries out and toughens quickly once past the right internal temperature. Watching the time and turning the spit regularly helps the heat reach the meat evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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