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Saddle of Venison

A roasted venison saddle cooked with butter, bacon, stock, sour cream, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Saddle of Venison

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the saddle

  1. Rub the saddle with a damp cloth.

  2. Carefully skin the saddle.

  3. Lard the saddle with thin strips of bacon.

  4. Place the joint in a baking tin.

  5. Sprinkle the joint with salt.

  6. Pour hot butter over the joint.

Roast

  1. Roast in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C), adding stock gradually.

  2. Add the sour cream thickened with a little flour.

  3. Roast for about 30 minutes until done.

Carve and serve

  1. Remove the meat carefully in one piece from the bone.

  2. Slice the meat slantingly.

  3. Replace the sliced meat on the bone for serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Venison + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 saddle
Forms the main body of the dish, and its lean meat is what the rest of the method cooks and carves.
Butter
Poured over the joint to add richness and help the surface brown in the hot oven.
Bacon
Lardoning strips add fat that keeps the lean venison moist during roasting.
Sour cream
Thickened with flour and added late, it makes a creamy, tangy sauce that softens the savoury meat.
Stock
Added gradually during roasting to moisten the joint and build the flavour of the pan sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the sour cream. Sour cream can curdle or separate when exposed to high heat. Thickening it with flour first helps stabilise it, and adding it toward the end of roasting keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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