Why it works: Red wine and venison work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 167 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
In a tossing pan, combine red wine, mushroom catsup, browning sauce, onion, and chopped anchovy.
Bring to a boil.
Add the venison and boil for 3-4 minutes.
Pour into a soup dish and serve with currant jelly or red cabbage.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Red wine + venisontop 5% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together167 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
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Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together2,048 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Red wine + mushroomtop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together720 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).
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Red wine + clovetop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together636 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
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Venison + curranttop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together443 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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 dish, with its flavour carried by the red wine sauce.
- Red wine
- Provides the liquid base and acidity that gives the sauce its depth of flavour.
- Anchovy
- Adds savoury depth to the sauce, though its fish flavour is largely muted by cooking.
- Onion
- Releases sweetness and aroma into the liquid as it simmers.
The step that matters
Adding the venison and boiling for 3-4 minutes. Thin slices of meat overcook quickly at a hard boil, becoming tough and dry. Keeping the time short and the slices thin keeps the meat tender.
Flavor stand-ins for the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, mushroom, sauce, onion, clove, anchovy, venison):
- Grapeabout as good a flavor fit
- Appleabout as good a flavor fit
- Red currantabout as good a flavor fit
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, mushroom, sauce, onion, clove, anchovy, venison. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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