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Roast or Baked Haunch of Venison

A roasted or baked haunch of venison seasoned with salt, pepper, flour paste, and glazed with currant jelly.

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 ↓

Roast or Baked Haunch of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off part of the knuckle bone and round the other end.

  2. Sprinkle the haunch with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover the meat with a paste made from flour and water or coarse cornmeal.

  4. Tie a thick paper around the haunch to hold the paste in place.

Roast

  1. Place the haunch near the fire to harden the paste.

  2. Baste the paper to prevent burning.

  3. Move the haunch farther from the fire.

  4. Maintain a strong, clear fire.

  5. Roast for about three hours, then remove the paste.

Glaze and serve

  1. Glaze the meat with melted stock jelly using a brush.

  2. Garnish with frills of paper around the bone.

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

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  4. Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together955 recipes

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

  5. Venison + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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, so it sets the dish's size, cooking time and flavour.
Flour or coarse cornmeal
Forms a protective paste crust that shields the meat from drying and burning in the fire.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, gamey flavour of the venison.

The step that matters

Maintain a strong, clear fire. A strong, steady fire gives the high heat needed to brown and cook the large cut, while the paste and paper protect the surface. Too weak a fire cooks slowly and can dry the meat.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, 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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