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Hashed Venison

A savory dish of venison simmered in gravy and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and venison work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hashed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Warm venison gravy if you have it.

  2. If you don't have gravy, simmer bones and trimmings in 1 pint of water for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan, then add enough flour to absorb the butter and stir well.

  2. Gradually add the strained gravy from the bones, bring to a boil, skim, and strain again.

  3. Add the venison to the sauce and warm gently without boiling to keep the meat tender.

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. Mutton + venisontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 bones and trimmings
Release flavour and body into the water to make the gravy.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and with flour forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Absorbs the melted butter and thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Mutton gravy or water
Serves as the liquid that becomes the savoury base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the venison without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes them dry and chewy, so the venison should be heated gently in the sauce until just warmed through.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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