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Haunch, Neck, and Shoulder of Venison

A roasted venison cut served with a gravy made from mutton fat and a currant jelly and port wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Haunch, Neck, and Shoulder of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the venison

  1. Remove the paste from the venison 32 minutes before serving.

  2. Draw the meat closer to the fire and baste it with butter and flour.

Make the gravy

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

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

  3. Uncover and reduce the gravy to 1 pint, seasoning with salt.

  4. For the currant-jelly sauce, beat currant jelly with port wine and melt over low heat.

Serve

  1. 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
Is the main meat, whose fat and lean structure give the roast its rich flavour.
Flour
Combined with butter for basting, it helps the surface brown and form a light coating.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the surface of the meat while it cooks.
Mutton fat
Browned and simmered with water to build a rich, savoury base for the gravy.
Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, gamey meat.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the currant-jelly sauce.

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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