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To Boast a Haunch or Shoulder of Venison in the English Mode

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Boast a Haunch or Shoulder of Venison in the English Mode

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the venison in fresh water for 4 hours.

  2. Baste the meat with a bouquet of sage dipped in olive oil.

  3. For the stuffing, mix fine herbs with lemon juice and ½ pound of fresh butter.

  4. Stuff the venison with the herb mixture before roasting.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,138 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the sage

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, olive, lemon, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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