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Savoury Gravy for Venison

A savory gravy made by stewing venison trimmings with water, salt, pepper, walnut pickle, and port or claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,039 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Savoury Gravy for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Brown the meat in a frying pan.

  2. Stew the browned meat slowly in enough water to make 1 pint of gravy.

  3. Skim off any scum and strain the gravy when done.

Season and serve

  1. Add salt, pepper, walnut pickle, and port or claret.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Venison + walnuttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together955 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison or mutton shanks
Provides the meat flavour that gives the gravy its base taste.
Good gravy
Supplies the body and savoury base that the stewed meat is built upon.
Port or claret
Adds wine acidity and depth, rounding out the savoury flavour of the gravy.
Walnut pickle
Contributes tangy, sharp acidity and a deep aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Browning meat triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates the roasted, savoury flavour compounds that the finished gravy depends on. Pale meat yields a flat-tasting gravy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper. 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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