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Haunch of Venison

A roasted haunch of venison seasoned with butter, salt, and flour, served with gravy, currant jelly, and French beans.

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 ↓

Haunch 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

  1. Wipe the haunch of venison with a clean kitchen cloth.

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

  3. Spread a sheet of white paper with butter and sprinkle the paper with coarse sea salt.

  4. Make a coarse paste with flour and water, about ½ inch thick.

  5. Cover the haunch with the paste and tie the paste on with pack thread.

Roast and serve

  1. Hang the haunch at a distance from the fire.

  2. Roast for 3.5 to 4 hours, basting often.

  3. Remove the paste fifteen minutes before serving.

  4. Move the meat closer to the fire.

  5. Baste the meat with butter.

  6. Dredge the meat with flour to create a frothy appearance.

  7. Serve hot with gravy sauce, currant jelly, and nicely cooked 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. 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 meat, whose lean muscle becomes tender and juicy with slow roasting.
Flour
Forms the protective paste that shields the meat from direct heat and keeps it moist.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and promotes browning on the meat's surface.

The step that matters

Removing the paste before serving. Timing matters: the paste shields the meat while it roasts, and removing it fifteen minutes before serving lets the surface dry and brown once the meat is moved closer to the fire.

“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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