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Hash of Cold Venison

A hash made from cold venison, bones, trimmings, water, butter, flour, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Hash of Cold Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the meat from the bones.

  2. Crack the bones and place them in a saucepan with the trimmings.

  3. Add just enough water to cover the bones and trimmings.

  4. Stew until the water is reduced by half.

  5. Strain the liquid.

Make the hash

  1. Add pieces of butter rolled in flour and some currant jelly.

  2. Add the cut venison pieces once the liquid boils.

  3. Cook for five minutes until ready to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

Cold venison
Provides the cooked meat that makes up the body of the hash.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded flavour.
Flour
Rolled with the butter, it thickens the liquid into a light sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruitiness that balances the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour mixture to the boiling liquid. Flour thickens only when it is dispersed and heated in liquid. Adding the rolled butter and flour to a boiling stock helps it blend without lumps, while the sauce thickens evenly. Adding it too cold or too early can leave clumps or a thin sauce.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Currantthe original
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, 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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