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To Dress Venison

A roasted haunch of venison served with a reduced gravy made from mutton fat and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and mutton work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Dress Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. If the venison is fresh, dry it with a cloth and hang it in an airy place.

  2. To preserve it, rub the venison with beaten ginger.

  3. If musty, wash it with lukewarm water, then with lukewarm milk and water, and dry it well.

  4. Before roasting, wash the venison again in lukewarm water and dry it.

Make the gravy

  1. Cut the fat from the mutton and brown it on one side on a gridiron.

  2. Place the browned fat in a saucepan with 1 quart of water, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Uncover and reduce the gravy until it reaches 1 pint, seasoning with coarse sea salt.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the haunch of venison for 3.5 to 3.75 hours, or 3.25 hours for a doe.

  2. Cover the haunch with buttered paper while roasting and baste frequently.

  3. When done, remove the paper and dust lightly with flour to froth the surface.

  4. Serve the gravy in a boat alongside the venison.

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 + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Haunch of venison
Is the main cut, and its long slow roasting makes the meat tender and cooked through.
Mutton fat
Browned and simmered into the gravy, it adds rich, savoury flavour and body.
Butter
Used for basting, it adds moisture and helps the surface brown richly under the paper.
Flour
Dusted on at the end, it helps the surface froth and brown lightly.

The step that matters

Covering the haunch with buttered paper and basting. Lean venison dries out easily during long roasting. The buttered paper slows surface moisture loss, and frequent basting keeps the meat moist and flavourful.

“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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