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To Roast a Haunch of Venison

A roasted haunch of venison seasoned with butter, salt, flour, and water, cooked slowly and basted.

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 ↓

To Roast a Haunch of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

  1. Cut off the knuckle.

  2. Trim the flap of the venison.

  3. Remove the thick skin on the flank.

  4. Nick the joint at the cramp-bone.

  5. Spit the haunch.

  6. Rub it with butter.

  7. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Protect and roast

  1. Cover with thin paper.

  2. Make a paste of flour and water.

  3. Cover the haunch with paper.

  4. Tie the paper securely with stout string.

  5. Roast for 4 to 5 hours, basting continuously.

Finish and serve

  1. One hour before serving, remove the paste.

  2. Sprinkle with salt.

  3. Dredge with flour.

  4. Baste with fresh butter.

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
The lean main meat, whose dense flesh sets the dish's texture and rich, gamy flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the surface moist and helps it brown while roasting.
Flour
Forms a paste that shields the meat and later browns into a crisp, flavourful crust.

The step that matters

Roast for 4 to 5 hours, basting continuously. Lean game dries out during long roasting. Frequent basting with melted fat coats the surface, keeping the meat moist and building a well-browned exterior.

“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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