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To Dress' Venison

Venison coated in lard paste, wrapped in buttered paper, cooked, basted with butter, seasoned with salt and flour, served with gravy, currant jelly, trench beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and beans are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,080 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress' Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the venison with a paste made of lard.

  2. Wrap the meat in buttered paper.

  3. Apply the stiff paste on top of the paper.

  4. Either dangle the meat or place it on a cradle spit.

Roast and baste

  1. A few minutes before it's done, remove the paste and paper.

  2. Baste the meat with butter.

  3. Season the meat with coarse sea salt and flour.

  4. Finish cooking.

  5. Give the meat a few more turns.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with hot dish and gravy.

  2. Boil any dry pieces and the shank in a little brown stock for gravy.

  3. Serve currant jelly in a boat and trench beans in a vegetable dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

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

  4. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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
The main meat, which the paste and paper protect while it cooks.
Lard
Forms a stiff paste that shields the meat and keeps its surface moist during roasting.
Butter
Basting adds richness and helps the exposed surface brown.
Flour
Helps the seasoned surface form a crust that browns during cooking.
Brown stock
Forms the base of the gravy, adding savoury depth and moisture.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Remove the paste and paper a few minutes before it's done. The paste and paper keep the surface from browning. Once they are off, the exposed meat can brown and crisp, but leaving them on too long or removing them too early changes the crust and the doneness.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, beans):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, beans. 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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