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Venison, Breast Of, Stewed

A stew of venison breast pieces browned with onions, bacon, and herbs, simmered in stock and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Venison, Breast Of, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the venison

  1. Dust the venison pieces with flour.

  2. In a pan, fry the venison in butter with the sliced onions and diced bacon until lightly browned.

  3. Drain excess fat, then add stock, port or claret, sweet herbs, anchovy, pepper, and salt.

  4. If desired, add a clove of garlic or rub the pan with it.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Simmer gently until the venison is tender, about 2 hours.

  2. Thicken the gravy with brown thickening and let it simmer until it separates from the fat.

Serve

  1. Serve the venison on a dish, strain and skim the gravy, and pour it around the meat.

  2. Garnish with toasted sippets and add stewed mushrooms if desired.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Provides the rich meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding depth to the gravy.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour to the browned base.
Port or claret
Adds acidity and fruity depth that balances the rich meat and gravy.
Stock
Provides the liquid that becomes the body of the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A gentle simmer lets the tough connective tissue in venison break down slowly. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and dries the meat out.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, flour, butter, onion, anchovy, pepper, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, flour, butter, onion, anchovy, pepper, garlic. 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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