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Venison, Cold, Stewed

A stew of cold cooked venison slices simmered in a seasoned stock with ketchup, red currant jelly, claret, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Venison, Cold, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Combine the bones and trimmings with enough stock or water to cover them in a saucepan.

  2. Add sweet herbs, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer for about 2 hours until the gravy is flavorful.

  4. Strain the mixture and thicken the gravy with brown thickening.

  5. Set aside to let the grease rise. Skim off the grease.

  6. Stir in ketchup, red currant jelly, and claret. Squeeze lemon juice into the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the venison slices to the sauce and heat thoroughly without boiling.

  2. Serve the meat on a dish, pouring the gravy over it. Garnish with sliced lemon.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked venison
Forms the main body of the dish, warmed through in the finished gravy.
Bones and trimmings from venison
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the stock during simmering, giving the gravy body.
Brown thickening
Starch that swells when heated, thickening the strained gravy.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tartness that balances the rich gravy.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavor to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the venison without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat and can make it dry and stringy, so the slices should be heated gently in the sauce until just hot through.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Red currantthe original
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, nutmeg, pepper, ketchup, lemon. 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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