Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Venison

A venison roast prepared with vinegar, spices, salt pork, currant jelly, claret wine, and a flour paste, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Wash the saddle of venison thoroughly in several waters.

  2. Rub it with vinegar, red pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Lard with strips of salt pork rolled in seasoned bread crumbs.

  4. Season with sweet marjoram, sweet basil, and pepper.

  5. Rub the whole with currant jelly.

  6. Pour over claret wine.

  7. Let it stand overnight.

Roast

  1. Cover the venison with a paste made of flour and water, half an inch thick.

  2. Cover with soft paper.

  3. Secure with strings.

  4. Place in a dripping pan with claret, butter, and water.

  5. Baste often.

  6. Half an hour before removing, take off the paste.

  7. Take off the paper.

  8. Baste with butter.

  9. Dredge with flour to brown.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Pork + marjoramtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Saddle of venison
Is the main meat, which the marinade and slow roasting make tender and moist.
Salt pork
Lardons add fat that bastes the lean venison from within as it roasts.
Vinegar
Acid that helps tenderize the surface of the meat during the overnight rest.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and gloss, and helps the surface brown.
Claret
Acidic wine that flavours the marinade and the pan liquid.
Flour
Forms a protective paste that keeps the meat moist, and a dusting that browns the crust.

The step that matters

Removing the paste and paper. Taking off the flour paste and paper too early stops protection and leaves the meat dry; too late, the surface will not brown well. Timing near the end matters.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, vinegar, pepper, pork, bread, marjoram, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, vinegar, pepper, pork, bread, marjoram, wine. 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.

More roast venison recipes

Haunch 28 See all 32 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes