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A Nice Stew From Cold Venison

A stew made from cold venison fragments and bones, thickened with browned butter, flour, and seasonings, garnished with pickles or lemon and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Nice Stew From Cold Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Make a gravy from the fragments and bones, adding mutton gravy if convenient.

  2. Let the gravy simmer, then skim it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add browned butter thickened with flour, ketchup, claret, currant jelly, and lemon juice.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add thinly sliced pieces of venison while simmering.

  3. Garnish with cut pickles or slices of lemon and fried bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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 fragments and bones
Provide the meat and the flavour base for the gravy.
Browned butter
Adds richness and a nutty, toasted aroma to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the browned butter so the sauce coats the meat.
Ketchup (in the method)
Adds sweet-tart acidity and depth to the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the sharpness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour must be cooked into the browned butter before the liquids go in, or it stays raw-tasting and forms lumps. Once thickened, the sauce should not be boiled hard, since prolonged vigorous boiling can thin it and toughen the thin venison slices added at the end.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, mutton, butter, flour, currant, bread. 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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