Skip to main content
Main

Hauxch of Venison

A haunch of venison roasted inside a flour and bran paste crust, with basting, dredging and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hauxch of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Hang the venison in a dry place for 10 days to 3 weeks, rubbing it dry with a clean cloth morning and night.

  2. Remove the shank and chine bones, strip off the skin, and trim rough pieces.

Make the paste crust

  1. Make a paste by rubbing sweet dripping into flour and bran, mixing with hot water to form a stiff paste. Let the paste stand for 1 hour, then roll it out to ½ inch thick and cover the venison completely.

Roast and serve

  1. Hang the venison before a solid fire for 45 minutes, then roast gradually, basting frequently with dissolved dripping. Cook for 13 minutes per pound, including the paste.

  2. Half an hour before serving, split the paste with a knife and remove it, dredging the haunch with baked flour and basting with butter until done. Place the venison on a hot dish with the fat side up, pour some gravy into the dish, and serve immediately.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

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 lean texture is protected and moistened by the enclosing paste.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that encloses the meat, creating a sealed crust that holds in moisture.
Sweet dripping
Adds fat to the paste and to basting, carrying flavour and helping the meat brown and stay moist.
Bran
Mixed into the paste to give it body and a firmer, more structured crust.
Butter
Used for basting at the end, adding fat that promotes browning and a rich surface.

The step that matters

Splitting and removing the paste before serving. Removing the crust near the end lets the exposed surface dry and brown, while the paste-sealed meat has been cooking gently; timing it too early leaves the haunch pale, and too late risks overcooking the outer meat.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, venison, butter, mutton, liver, shallot, carrot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, venison, butter, mutton, liver, shallot, carrot. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes