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To Roast Venison

A method for roasting a haunch of venison wrapped in paper and coated with a flour‑butter paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

  1. Preheat your fire to a brisk heat.

  2. Butter two sheets of paper and place them on the haunch of venison.

  3. Make a paste with flour, butter, and water.

  4. Roll the paste out to half the size of the haunch.

  5. Cover the fat part of the haunch with the paste.

  6. Place the remaining two sheets of paper on top and tie them with packthread.

Roast

  1. Roast the venison, basting it well throughout the cooking time.

  2. For a 24-pound haunch, roast for 3.5 hours unless using a very large fire, then 3 hours will suffice.

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

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

  3. Venison + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 haunch
Is the main cut of meat, cooked whole and kept moist under the paper and paste.
Flour
Forms the paste that wraps and shields the fat part of the haunch.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the meat and helps the paper and paste stay moist.
Paste (in the method)
Acts as a protective crust that slows drying of the surface during roasting.

The step that matters

Roast the venison, basting it well throughout the cooking time.. Venison is lean, so it dries out easily over a long roast. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and carries fat over the meat, helping it stay tender.

“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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