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To Dress Venison

A roasted haunch of venison served with a gravy made from mutton loin and a currant jelly and port wine sauce, accompanied by French beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Dress Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the haunch

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Spread a sheet of white paper with butter, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and cover the haunch with it.

  3. Wrap the haunch in a coarse paste on strong paper and tie it with fine thread.

Roast and finish the venison

  1. Roast the haunch of venison for 3.5 hours, or 3.25 hours for a doe, ensuring it is slightly underdone.

  2. Baste the meat often during roasting.

  3. Ten minutes before serving, remove the paste, move the meat closer to the fire, and baste with butter and flour to create a frothy finish.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, cut off the fat from the mutton and grill the steaks until browned on one side.

  2. Place the steaks in a saucepan with 1 quart of water, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Uncover and reduce the gravy until it reaches 1 pint, seasoning with salt only.

Serve

  1. For the currant-jelly sauce, mix currant jelly with 1–2 tablespoons of port wine and heat until melted.

  2. Serve the venison with the gravy and currant-jelly sauce, alongside French beans.

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. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  3. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  4. Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Lean meat that becomes tender and juicy when roasted slowly and kept slightly underdone.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown and crisp during basting.
Flour
Combines with butter in the basting to form a frothy, lightly browned crust.
Mutton
Browned and simmered into the gravy, giving it a deep, meaty flavour and body.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich, gamey meat.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the jelly sauce as it is heated and melted.

The step that matters

Keep the venison slightly underdone. Roasting too long dries out lean game meat, since its proteins tighten and squeeze out moisture. Stopping while still a little rare keeps it tender and juicy.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, mutton, currant, port wine, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, mutton, currant, port wine, sugar. 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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