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Roasted Fawn

Roasted fawn is a whole animal roasted with butter, bacon, and served with a chevron sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roasted Fawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fawn

  1. Skewer and stuff the fawn like a hare.

  2. Spit the fawn and cover it with oiled butter and a sprinkle of salt.

  3. Cover the back of the fawn with bacon slices and writing paper, tying it with twine.

  4. Baste the fawn with butter.

  5. Sprinkle the fawn with salt.

  6. Dredge the fawn with flour after removing the paper.

Make the Chevron Sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan to prepare the Chevron Sauce.

  2. Add chopped parsley, shallots, thyme, mushrooms, and gravy to the sauce.

  3. Simmer the sauce for 15 minutes.

  4. Add flour to the sauce to absorb the butter.

  5. Stir in stock and boil briefly.

  6. Remove the sauce from heat.

  7. Squeeze lemon juice into the sauce.

  8. Add sugar to the sauce.

  9. Season the sauce with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into a dish.

  2. Place the fawn over the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Deer + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Deer + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Fawn
Is the main meat, cooked whole and carved for the dish.
Bacon
Lays over the back of the fawn to add fat and protect the meat while it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, and helps the surface brown as it is basted.
Flour
Dredged over the fawn to help form a browned crust, and thickens the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savour to the Chevron Sauce.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the sauce to absorb the butter. Flour bound with melted butter forms a roux that thickens the sauce. Adding it too quickly or without cooking it out can leave lumps or a raw floury taste.

“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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