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To Roast a Haunch, Neck, or Shoulder of Venison

Roast a haunch, neck, or shoulder of venison with butter, salt, and a paste, served with gravy and currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Roast a Haunch, Neck, or Shoulder 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.

Prepare the venison

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

  2. Spread a sheet of white paper with butter and sprinkle it with coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover the venison with a coarse paste on strong paper and tie it with fine pack thread.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the venison a good distance from the fire and baste it often.

  2. Ten minutes before serving, remove the paste, move the meat closer to the fire, and baste it with butter and flour.

Make the gravy and sauce

  1. For the gravy, brown the fat from the mutton on a gridiron, then simmer it in a saucepan with 1 quart of water for 1 hour.

  2. Uncover and reduce the gravy to 1 pint, seasoning with salt only.

  3. For the currant jelly sauce, melt currant jelly with 1-2 tablespoons of port wine over low heat, adding sugar if needed.

Serve

  1. Serve the venison with the gravy and currant jelly sauce, alongside French beans.

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. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Venison
Forms the main meat, which the paste and basting keep moist as it roasts.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown as the meat is basted.
Flour
Mixed with butter for basting, it helps the surface brown and crisp.
Mutton fat
Browned and simmered with water to build the body and flavour of the gravy.
Currant jelly
Supplies sweetness and acidity to balance the rich meat and gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth and aroma to the currant jelly sauce.

The step that matters

Moving the meat closer to the fire for the final ten minutes. Too close or too long over direct heat can scorch the surface before the interior cooks through, while too little heat leaves the crust pale. Timing the move keeps the browning controlled.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, mutton, currant, port wine, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, mutton, currant, port wine, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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