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To Dress Venison

Roast a haunch of venison, then dress it with butter, salt, and a gravy made from mutton fat.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the venison

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Spread a sheet of white paper with butter and sprinkle with coarse sea salt, then cover the fat of the venison.

  3. Lay a coarse paste on strong paper, cover the haunch, and tie it with fine pack-thread.

Roast

  1. Roast the haunch of venison for 3.5 hours for buck or 3.25 hours for doe.

  2. Baste the venison often while roasting.

  3. Ten minutes before serving, remove the paste, move the meat closer to the fire, and baste with butter and flour.

Make the gravy and sauces

  1. For the gravy, brown the fat from the mutton steaks on a gridiron for a few minutes.

  2. Place the browned mutton in a saucepan with 1 quart of water, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Uncover and reduce the gravy until it reaches 1 pint, seasoning only with salt.

  4. Serve currant jelly in a separate dish.

  5. To make pap-sauce, boil grated white bread with port wine, water, and cinnamon until smooth, then remove the cinnamon and add sugar.

  6. For jelly-sauce, melt currant jelly with port wine and sugar over low heat.

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

Haunch of venison
Is the main meat, cooked slowly so it becomes tender and juicy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the basting coat the meat with flavour and colour.
Flour
Mixed with butter for basting, it helps the surface brown and form a crust.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tartness to the sauces and the side dish.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the sauces.
Old mutton
Its browned fat and simmered meat build a savoury base for the gravy.

The step that matters

Ten minutes before serving, remove the paste, move the meat closer to the fire, and baste with butter and flour.. Removing the paste and raising the heat late lets the exposed surface brown and form a crisp crust. Doing it too early or too long can dry or scorch the meat.

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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