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Roasted Venison Haunch

Roasted venison haunch covered in buttered paper and flour paste, basted with beef dripping, served with brown gravy, currant jelly, port wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roasted Venison Haunch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the haunch in lukewarm milk and water, then dry it thoroughly.

  2. Cover the haunch with a sheet of buttered white paper.

  3. Make a paste of flour and water, about ¼ inch thick, and cover the paper with it.

  4. Tie another buttered paper over the paste with string.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the haunch over a substantial fire, basting constantly with beef dripping.

  2. When nearly done, remove the paste, baste with butter, and lightly dredge with flour until it froths and turns light brown.

  3. Serve with its own gravy, and provide brown gravy and currant jelly sauce mixed with port wine and sugar on the side.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 cut of meat, cooked whole and kept moist under its paper and paste covering.
Flour
Forms the protective paste that shields the meat, and dredging flour froths and browns the surface.
Beef dripping
Bastes the meat with fat, adding moisture and helping the surface brown during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, promoting a golden colour and rich flavour on the finished surface.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity to the accompanying sauce, balancing the rich meat.

The step that matters

Basting the haunch constantly during roasting. Regular basting with dripping keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, while the paste and paper protect the meat from drying out over the long roast.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, milk, butter, flour, beef, port wine, 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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