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To Roast Venison

A roasted haunch of venison coated with flour paste and buttered paper, served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

  1. Spit the haunch of venison.

  2. Place 2 sheets of buttered paper on the haunch.

  3. Make a paste with flour, a little butter, and water; roll it out to cover the fat part of the haunch.

  4. Cover the haunch with the remaining 2 sheets of paper and tie them with packthread.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast over a brisk fire, basting well throughout the cooking time.

  2. For a 24-pound haunch, roast for 3.5 hours; adjust time for smaller haunches.

  3. Near the end, remove the paper and paste, dust with flour, and baste with butter.

  4. When light brown, serve with brown 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Venison + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked slowly over a brisk fire until tender.
Flour
Forms a paste that protects the fat, and a light dusting later helps the surface brown.
Butter
Adds moisture and fat when basting, helping the surface brown and develop flavour.
Buttered paper
Shields the meat from direct heat so it cooks gently under the covering.

The step that matters

Basting well throughout the cooking time. Lean venison dries out over a hot fire. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and encourages an even golden-brown crust.

“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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