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To Dress Venison

Roasted haunch of venison served with a currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Dress Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and roast

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the haunch of venison with butter and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and pounded ginger.

  3. Cover the haunch with parchment paper and place it in the oven.

  4. Roast for three and a half hours, ensuring it is underdone rather than overdone.

Make the sauces

  1. In a saucepan, combine white bread, port wine, water, and a stick of cinnamon; boil until smooth.

  2. Remove the cinnamon and add sugar to taste.

  3. For the jelly sauce, beat currant jelly with a spoonful or two of port wine and heat until melted.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Lean meat that provides the main body and flavour of the dish.
White bread
Thickens the boiled port sauce, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity, and sets into a glossy, tart sauce when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the surface of the meat, helping it brown.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, body and depth of flavour to both sauces.

The step that matters

Roasting to underdone. Venison is very lean, so overcooking drives out moisture and leaves it dry and tough. Stopping at a slightly underdone point keeps the meat tender and juicy.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, pepper, bread, port wine, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, pepper, bread, port wine, cinnamon, 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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