Name: Roast Venison
Ingredients: piece of venison (haunch, fillet, or small shoulder); veal seasoning; flour; water; butter; red currant jelly; port wine

Why it works: Red currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Roast 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.

Season the venison with veal seasoning.
Make a paste with flour and water, then roll it out into a sheet large enough to cover the joint.
Wrap the venison in the paste and wet the edges to make it adhere.
Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about two hours or longer, depending on the size of the joint.
Remove the paste and return the venison to the oven for ten minutes to brown, basting well with butter.
Serve with red currant jelly and a rich gravy with a little port wine added.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Red currant + port winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together239 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,499 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together957 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Swap the red currant

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

Currantfits about as well
Red currantthe original
Figfits about as well
Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, veal, flour, butter, port wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.