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Haunch of Venison

A roasted haunch of venison seasoned with butter, salt, and flour, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

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.

Prepare

  1. Wipe the haunch of venison with a clean kitchen cloth.

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

  3. Spread a sheet of white paper with butter and sprinkle the paper with coarse sea salt.

  4. Make a coarse paste of flour and water, about ½ inch thick, and cover the haunch with the paste.

  5. Tie the paste on with kitchen twine.

  6. Hang the haunch at a distance from the fire.

Roast and finish

  1. Roast for 3.5 to 4 hours, basting often.

  2. Fifteen minutes before serving, remove the paste.

  3. Move the meat closer to the fire.

  4. Baste well with butter.

  5. Dredge with flour to create a frothy appearance.

  6. Serve hot with gravy sauce and currant-jelly sauce, both heated, alongside cooked 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 buck venison
Is the main cut of meat, and its long roasting turns the thick joint tender and juicy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown and taste savoury as it cooks.
Flour
Mixed with water into a paste that shields the meat from drying out and burning during the long roast.

The step that matters

Remove the paste fifteen minutes before serving. The paste protects the meat during the long roast. Removing it near the end lets the surface brown and crisp, and moving the meat closer to the fire finishes the colour. Timing it too early or too late changes the 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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