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
Preheat your fire to a brisk heat.
Butter two sheets of paper and place them on the haunch of venison.
Make a paste with flour, butter, and water; roll it out to half the size of the haunch.
Cover the fat part of the haunch with the paste.
Place the remaining two sheets of paper on top and tie them with pack thread.
Roast
Roast the venison, basting it well throughout the cooking time.
For a 24-pound haunch, roast for 3.5 hours unless using a very large fire; then 3 hours will suffice.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together957 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Venison + flourtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Flour
- Forms a paste that shields the lean meat from drying in the heat.
- Butter
- Adds fat that enriches the meat and helps keep the paper and paste from scorching.
The step that matters
Basting throughout the roast. Venison is lean, so it dries out easily over a long roast. Regular basting adds fat and moisture to the surface and helps keep the meat juicy.
“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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