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To Roast a Haunch, Neck, or Shoulder of Venison

Roasted venison served with gravy, currant jelly sauce, and French beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Roast a Haunch, Neck, or Shoulder of 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 strong paper with butter and sprinkle it with coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover the venison with a coarse paste on strong paper and tie it with fine packthread.

  4. Place the venison a good distance from the fire and baste it often.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, remove the paste, move the meat closer to the fire, and baste with butter and flour to create a frothy appearance.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, cut off the fat from the mutton and brown it on a gridiron.

  2. Simmer the browned fat in a saucepan with 1 quart of water for 1 hour, then uncover and reduce to 1 pint.

  3. Season the gravy with salt only.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For currant jelly sauce, melt currant jelly with 1-2 spoonfuls of port wine over low heat, adding sugar if needed.

  2. Serve the venison with the gravy and currant jelly sauce alongside French beans.

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. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main meat, which is cooked slowly and basted to stay moist and browned.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the basting layer brown and turn frothy.
Flour
Combines with butter in the basting mixture to form a frothy, lightly browned crust.
Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the rich, gamey meat.
Port wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fruity aroma to the currant jelly sauce.

The step that matters

Ten minutes before serving, move the meat closer to the fire and baste with butter and flour. Moving the meat closer to the heat late in cooking browns the surface quickly. If left too long, or done too early, the basting layer can scorch or the meat can dry out.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, mutton, currant, port wine, sugar. 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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