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To Dress Venison

A roasted haunch of venison dressed with butter, salt, and paper, served with gravy, currant jelly, and French beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Dress Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the venison

  1. Roast the haunch of venison for 3.5 hours for buck or 3.25 hours for doe, ensuring it is slightly overdone.

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

  3. Cover the fat of the haunch.

  4. Lay a coarse paste on strong paper.

  5. Cover the haunch.

  6. Tie it with fine pack thread.

  7. Position the haunch at a distance from a good fire.

  8. Baste it often.

  9. Remove the paste.

  10. Move the meat closer to the fire.

  11. Baste with butter and flour.

Make the gravy

  1. Cut off the fat from the mutton.

  2. Brown the fat on a gridiron.

  3. Place the browned mutton in a saucepan with 1 quart of water.

  4. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

  5. Uncover the gravy.

  6. Reduce the gravy to 1 pint and season with salt.

Make the sauces and serve

  1. Serve currant jelly in a boat.

  2. Boil white bread with port wine, water, and a cinnamon stick until smooth.

  3. Remove the cinnamon.

  4. Add sugar.

  5. Melt currant jelly with 1-2 spoonfuls of port wine over low heat.

  6. Add sugar if needed.

  7. Serve with 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 haunch
Long roasting in dry heat turns the meat tender and browned on the outside.
Mutton
Simmered in water to build a rich, meaty body for the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown while basting.
Flour
Thickens the basting liquid and helps the surface brown.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness that balance the rich, gamy meat.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the sauces.

The step that matters

Roast until slightly overdone. Venison is very lean, so overcooking dries it, but the record asks for slightly overdone meat; basting often keeps the surface from drying while the long roast cooks the meat through.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, mutton, port wine, sugar, cinnamon. 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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