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To Roast Venison

A roasted venison haunch served with a wine and currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 443 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Roast Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sprinkle the venison with salt and pepper, then cover it with greased white paper.

Roast

  1. Place the venison in the oven with hot water and the slices of pickled pork on top.

  2. Baste the venison well for about 2 hours.

  3. Remove the paper and baste again for nearly 1 hour to brown nicely.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. To make the brown gravy, dredge the drippings in the pan with both white and browned flour.

  2. Add wine and currant jelly to taste.

  3. Serve the venison very hot with the gravy.

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

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

  2. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Wine + curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 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
Forms the main meat; slow roasting with basting keeps it moist and tender.
Pickled pork
Lays fat and salty flavour over the meat as it roasts and drips into the pan.
Butter
Greases the paper so it does not stick, keeping the surface of the meat intact.
White and browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the pan drippings into gravy and adds toasty, browned flavour.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich gravy.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth to the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Remove the paper and baste to brown. Basting keeps the surface moist while the paper comes off, and the final hour of direct heat is what browns the meat. Too little basting can leave it dry and pale.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, butter, pork, wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, pork, wine. 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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