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To Dress Venison

A roasted haunch of buck or doe venison, dressed with a coarse paste and served with currant jelly and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and mutton work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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 haunch

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

  2. Butter a sheet of cartridge paper and spread it over the venison.

  3. Lay a coarse paste on top and cover with another sheet of paper, tying it with string.

  4. Melt the fat for basting and keep it ready.

Roast

  1. Roast a haunch of buck venison for 4½ hours or a doe venison for 3½ hours.

  2. Baste the venison often to prevent the paste from burning, keeping it at a distance from the fire.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before serving, remove the paper and paste, then sprinkle with salt and flour.

  2. Baste with melted butter to create a frothy finish.

  3. Serve the venison on a hot water-dish with hot plates.

  4. Serve with currant jelly.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, simmer the shank-bone and mutton with salt and water until the meat falls off the bone.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter, removing excess fat.

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. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  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 + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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
Provides the main lean meat that is roasted and served.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and forms a light crust on the finished joint.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the finish turn golden and frothy when basted.
Mutton
Simmered with the shank-bone to build the body and flavor of the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the venison often. Frequent basting keeps the paste and surface moist so it does not burn, while the joint stays at a distance from the fire so it cooks through gently rather than scorching outside.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Currantthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

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