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To Roast Venison

A roasted venison haunch seasoned with vinegar, water, spices, claret, and served with sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the venison in vinegar and water, then dry it well.

  2. Cover the venison with caul or buttered paper.

Roast

  1. Baste with butter until nearly done.

  2. Boil the claret with mace, nutmeg, pepper, and cloves.

  3. Pour the mixture over the venison three times.

  4. Strain the liquor and pour it over the venison again.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet sauce.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Venison
The main cut of meat, whose lean muscle sets the texture of the finished dish.
Claret
Adds moisture and acidity, and its flavor carries into the meat as it is poured over.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture while basting, helping the surface brown and stay juicy.
Mace
Adds warm aroma to the claret mixture that the meat absorbs.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the claret mixture poured over the meat.

The step that matters

Baste with butter until nearly done. Venison is very lean, so it dries out easily when overcooked. Regular basting with fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown, and stopping as it nears doneness protects the juiciness inside.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, vinegar, butter, nutmeg, pepper, clove, sauce):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, vinegar, butter, nutmeg, pepper, clove, sauce. 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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