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Venison Gravy

A gravy made from beef neck and venison simmered in water, thickened with butter and flour, seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, Port wine, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Venison Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the beef neck and venison with cold water in a pot and bring to a boil, covered.

  2. Boil until the meat has no flavor, then stir in the butter and flour mixture.

  3. If the gravy is not thick enough, add more flour and season with salt, pepper, cloves, and Port wine.

  4. Add mace if desired, and ensure the gravy is well stirred and boiled.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  5. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef neck
Simmered in water to release meaty flavor into the broth that forms the gravy base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smoother mouthfeel and rounder flavor.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch gelatinizes during boiling, giving the gravy body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to thicken. Flour starch thickens only when heated sufficiently and stirred, so the gravy must be well stirred and kept boiling to avoid lumps and to reach full thickness. Adding more flour later can cause clumping if not whisked in well.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, venison, butter, flour, pepper, clove, port wine):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, venison, butter, flour, pepper, clove, port 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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