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Venison the Haunch

A roasted venison haunch served with flour froth and currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Venison the Haunch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the haunch of venison in warm milk and water, then dry it with a clean cloth.

  2. If the skin smells musty, remove it and wrap the haunch in paper greased with fresh butter.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the haunch, basting frequently.

  2. Cook a buck haunch for about 4 hours, a small haunch for 3.5 hours, and a doe haunch for 3.25 hours.

  3. Remove the paper when done, dredge with flour to create a froth, and serve the haunch on a dish.

  4. Serve the gravy separately 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Is the main cut of meat, cooked whole so its dense muscle roasts slowly and stays moist.
Fresh butter
Greases the paper wrapping, adding fat that keeps the surface from drying and gives a richer flavour.
Flour
Dredged over the haunch at the end to form a froth on the surface.
Currant jelly
Served alongside as a sweet and tart accompaniment that balances the rich, gamey meat.

The step that matters

Judging the cooking time by haunch type. Cooking times differ by the size and kind of haunch, and the meat's muscle fibres toughen and dry out if roasted too long, so check for doneness rather than relying only on the clock.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Currantthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

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