Skip to main content
Main

To Roast a Haunch of Venison

A roasted haunch of venison seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter, served after resting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Venison and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Roast a Haunch of 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the haunch of venison with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Rub the meat with butter.

  4. Place the haunch in a roasting pan and add a little water.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in the oven for about 1.5 to 2 hours, basting occasionally.

  2. Check for doneness and let it rest before serving.

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

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

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together955 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main body of the dish; its lean protein sets firm and carves into slices when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour, helps browning on the surface, and softens the dry lean meat.

The step that matters

Checking doneness and resting. Venison haunch is very lean, so it dries out and toughens quickly once overcooked. Checking doneness before the meat is fully done, then resting it, lets juices redistribute so the slices stay moist.

“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.

You might also like

Roast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes