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Saddle of Venison

A roasted saddle of venison larded with pork or bacon, seasoned with coarse sea salt, and served with a currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 443 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Saddle of Venison

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Lard the venison thickly with fat pork or bacon and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the meat in a baking pan with 1 cup of water and 2 ounces of butter.

Roast

  1. Baste the meat often to prevent it from drying out.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour for every 3 pounds of meat.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Prepare the gravy in the roasting pan as you would for other baked meats.

  2. Add 3-4 tablespoons of currant jelly to the gravy.

  3. Serve a mold of currant jelly on the table with the venison.

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

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

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

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

  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. Venison + porktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 cut of meat that is cooked and carved for the dish.
Fat pork or bacon
Larding adds fat that bastes the lean venison from within and keeps it moist.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan liquid and helps the meat brown and taste savoury.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich, gamey flavour of the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the meat often. Venison is very lean, so its surface can dry out in the oven. Regular basting with the pan liquid and fat keeps the meat moist and helps build flavour on the outside.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Applefits about as well
  2. Currantthe original
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pork, 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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