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Roasted Fawn

Roasted fawn with bacon, butter, and a brown stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roasted Fawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fawn

  1. Skewer and stuff the fawn like a hare.

  2. Place the fawn on a spit.

  3. Cover the fawn with oiled butter.

  4. Sprinkle the fawn with salt.

  5. Place bacon over the back.

  6. Cover with writing paper.

  7. Tie with twine.

  8. Baste the fawn with butter.

  9. Sprinkle the fawn with salt.

  10. Dredge the fawn with flour.

  11. Remove the paper.

Make the Chevreuil sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Add parsley, shallots, thyme, mushrooms, and brown stock to the pan.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Add flour to absorb the butter.

  5. Stir for a few more minutes.

  6. Add 2 cups of stock.

  7. Stir until it boils.

  8. Remove from heat.

  9. Squeeze in lemon juice.

  10. Add sugar.

  11. Season with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into a dish.

  2. Place the fawn over it.

  3. Serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing butter and binding with the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fawn and carries flavor into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Bacon
Lays fat over the back of the fawn, keeping the lean meat moist as it roasts.

The step that matters

Remove from heat once the sauce boils. Flour thickens only when it is cooked in hot liquid, but overcooking a roux-style sauce can break it or make it pasty. Lemon juice is added off the heat so its acidity stays fresh and does not curdle the sauce.

“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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