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The Christmas Dinner

A roasted venison haunch served with walnut catsup and currant jelly gravy, garnished with lemon slices and pickled beet-root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The Christmas Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Purchase the venison a week in advance and hang it in a cool place.

  2. Wash it daily with vinegar, then with warm and cold water on Christmas morning.

  3. Wipe it dry and encase it in a paste made of flour and water, wrapped in two layers of thick paper.

Roast

  1. Fill a roasting pan one-third full of hot water and baste the meat often.

  2. Remove the coverings 45 minutes before serving.

  3. Check for doneness and return the meat to the oven.

  4. Rub the meat with butter.

  5. Dredge the meat with flour.

  6. Baste the meat several times until browned.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For gravy, stir brown flour, walnut catsup, currant jelly, and lemon juice into the drippings after the meat is served.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices and pickled beet-root.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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
Forms the main body of the roast, and its long hanging and basting keep it moist and tender.
Flour
Encasing paste and dredging coat help protect the meat and promote a browned surface.
Butter
Rubbed onto the meat to add fat, aiding browning and richness.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy, balancing its savoury drippings.
Walnut catsup
Contributes a deep, savoury flavour to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Check for doneness and return the meat to the oven. Venison is very lean, so overcooking dries it quickly; checking doneness before the final browning helps keep it juicy while the surface still gets colour.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, vinegar, flour, butter, walnut, lemon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, vinegar, flour, butter, walnut, lemon. 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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