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Venison, Roast

A large haunch of venison roasted with butter, flour paste, and served with mashed potatoes and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Venison, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to a strong heat.

  2. Cover the venison with a large sheet of buttered white paper.

  3. Make a coarse paste of flour and water, and cover the thicker parts of the venison with it.

  4. Secure the paste and paper with packthread.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the venison for 3 to 5 hours, basting frequently.

  2. About 15 to 20 minutes before it's done, remove the paper, string, and paste.

  3. Dredge the venison lightly with flour and salt, and baste with butter.

  4. Serve on a dry dish with strong gravy and currant jelly sauce on the side, along with mashed potatoes.

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 + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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 large joint needs long, gentle roasting to cook through.
Flour
Forms a protective paste over thicker parts and dredges the surface for a browned crust.
Butter
Greases the paper and is basted over the meat, adding moisture and richness to the surface.

The step that matters

Removing the paper, string, and paste. Taking these off about 15 to 20 minutes before the end lets the surface dry and brown. Leaving them on too long keeps the meat pale and steamed.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, potato. 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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