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Haunch of Venison

A roasted venison haunch wrapped in dough, basted with butter and sprinkled with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Haunch of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop off the shank of the venison and remove the skin, leaving the fat.

  2. Make a dough with flour and water, roll it out to fit the shape of the venison, and cover the meat with it.

  3. Secure the dough with paper and pack thread, then place it on the spit at a distance from the fire.

Roast

  1. Baste the venison often while it roasts.

  2. Remove the dough.

Finish

  1. Dredge the meat with flour.

  2. Baste it with butter.

  3. Sprinkle with salt.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Venison + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison haunch
Forms the main body of the roast, providing the meat and fat that carry the flavour.
Flour
Forms the dough wrapper around the meat and, dredged on the surface, helps it brown.
Butter
Adds fat that bastes the surface, keeping it moist and promoting browning.

The step that matters

Placing the spit at a distance from the fire. Gentle, indirect heat lets a large joint cook through to the centre without scorching the outside. The dough wrapper shields the meat, and frequent basting keeps the surface from drying out while it roasts.

“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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