Skip to main content
Main

Mock Roast of Venison

A roast made from finely minced beef and pork mixed with breadcrumbs and eggs, seasoned, baked, and served with a cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Mock Roast of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all skin, sinews, and other unwanted parts from the meat for gravy.

  2. Mince the beef and pork very finely.

  3. Mix the minced beef and pork with the bread crumbs and beaten eggs.

  4. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

  5. Shape the seasoned mixture into a loaf.

  6. Set the loaf aside until the next morning.

  7. Cut the pork fat into strips.

  8. Lard the loaf with the pork fat strips.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the loaf in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

  2. Baste the roast first with butter and then with gravy.

  3. Add the cream to the gravy an hour before the roast is done.

  4. Strain the gravy through a fine sieve.

  5. Serve the strained gravy in a tureen with the roast.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meaty body of the loaf, with its fat adding juiciness as it roasts.
Pork
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean meat from drying out during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and help hold the minced meat together in a loaf.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when sliced after roasting.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside of the roast brown during basting.
Cream
Enriches the gravy, giving it a smooth, rounded body and mellow flavor.

The step that matters

Add the cream to the gravy an hour before the roast is done. Cream is a dairy emulsion that can separate or curdle if it boils hard or cooks for a long time. Adding it late and keeping the gravy at a gentle simmer keeps it smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes