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To Roast a Haunch Op Venison

Roasted haunch of venison served with currant jelly and gravy.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the venison

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

  2. Cover it with thick paper to prevent burning and position it at a safe distance from the fire.

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

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

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 salt.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Serve the venison 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

Venison haunch
Forms the main body of the dish, so its slow roasting sets the texture of the meat.
Butter
Basting adds moisture and richness to the surface of the meat as it roasts.
Butter rolled in flour
The flour and butter mixture thickens the gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, gamey flavour of the meat.

The step that matters

Roast for about 2 hours, ensuring it is not overcooked. Venison is very lean, so overcooking dries out the meat and toughens its fibres. Turning and basting help keep the surface moist while the centre cooks through.

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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