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To Roast Venison

A slow‑roasted venison saddle seasoned with vinegar, spices, and claret, served with a sauce of venison scraps, currant jelly, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Wash the saddle of venison thoroughly in several waters.

  2. Rub it with vinegar, red pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Lard with strips of salt pork rolled in seasoned bread crumbs.

  4. Season with sweet marjoram, sweet basil, and pepper.

  5. Rub the whole with currant jelly and pour over claret wine.

  6. Let it stand overnight.

Roast

  1. The next morning, cover the venison with a paste made of flour and water, half an inch thick.

  2. Cover with soft paper and secure with strings.

  3. Place in a dripping pan with claret, butter, and water, and baste often.

  4. Half an hour before removing, take off the paste and paper, baste with butter, and dredge with flour to brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil venison scraps with water, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper until reduced to a pint.

  2. Skim off the fat, strain, and add currant jelly, claret, and butter rolled in flour.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Pork + marjoramtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 meat being roasted, so its fat and muscle set the texture and flavour of the dish.
Salt pork
Larding adds fat through the lean meat, keeping it moist and juicy during roasting.
Flour and water paste
Encloses the venison, shielding it from direct heat so it cooks gently and stays moist.
Claret
Acidity and wine flavour in the marinade, pan liquid and sauce, adding depth to the meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the marinade and sauce, balancing the wine's acidity.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the surface when basted and dredged with flour.

The step that matters

Removing the paste and browning. Taking off the paste and basting with butter and flour late in roasting lets the surface brown. Removing it too early leaves the meat pale, while leaving it on too long stops browning entirely.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, vinegar, pepper, pork, bread, marjoram, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, vinegar, pepper, pork, bread, marjoram, wine. 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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