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Stewed Venison

A stew of venison backbone pieces simmered with onion, herbs, spices, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the venison backbone pieces in a stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Add the grated onion, sweet herbs, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and red pepper pod.

  3. If the mixture becomes dry, add boiling water as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, thicken the stew with flour rubbed smooth in the butter.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Venison + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

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

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

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

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 backbone
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the stew is built around.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens into the liquid.
Butter
Carries the flour smoothly and adds richness to the finished stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour rubbed in butter. Flour must be worked smooth into the butter before it is stirred in, because raw flour clumps when added directly to hot liquid. Adding it just before serving keeps the sauce from over-thickening or going pasty.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, meat, pepper, butter, flour. 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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