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Boast Haunch Venison

A slow-roasted venison haunch wrapped in paper and butter, served with a spiced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boast Haunch Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

  1. If the outside is hard, wash it with lukewarm water.

  2. Rub the haunch all over with fresh butter or lard.

  3. Cover the top and sides with a thick paste of flour and water, about ½ inch thick.

  4. Lay a large sheet of well-buttered thin white wrapping paper on top, followed by thick foolscap paper.

  5. Secure everything in place with greased pack-thread.

Roast

  1. Place the haunch in a roasting pan with a little water.

  2. Baste the meat with butter and water occasionally to prevent scorching.

  3. Roast for at least 5 hours, testing for doneness with a skewer about 30 minutes before finishing.

  4. If the skewer passes easily to the bone, reduce the heat and baste every few minutes with melted butter.

  5. Dredge the haunch with flour to create a froth.

  6. Serve the haunch when browned.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, combine scraps of raw venison, water, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Stew the mixture slowly until reduced by half.

  3. Skim the surface.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Rinse the pan with hot water.

  6. Add currant jelly.

  7. Add butter.

  8. Thicken with browned flour.

  9. Serve the gravy.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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
Is the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during long, slow roasting.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the surface, and helps the meat brown while it roasts.
Flour
Forms a protective paste that shields the meat from drying and scorching, then froths and browns.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, gamey flavour of the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour and colour.

The step that matters

Testing the haunch with a skewer. Roasting for at least 5 hours is long, so the skewer test shows whether the meat is cooked through. A skewer that passes easily to the bone means the meat is tender, so the heat should be lowered to avoid drying it out.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, clove, mace, nutmeg. 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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