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Venison Collops, Minced

A minced venison dish cooked with butter, flour, parsley, herbs, and optional seasonings, simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison Collops, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the venison finely and season with pepper, salt, and pounded mace.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, then stir in the flour until smooth.

Make the collops

  1. Add the chopped parsley, sweet herbs, and additional seasoning, and cook until lightly browned.

  2. Stir in the minced venison and toss lightly with a fork until heated through.

Simmer and finish

  1. Gradually moisten with the stock and let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Add ketchup, port, tarragon vinegar, lemon juice, or basil wine 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it heats through in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and enriches the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with butter and then liquid, it thickens the mixture into a smooth sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid that moistens the meat and forms the sauce during simmering.

The step that matters

Gradually moisten with the stock. Adding stock slowly to the butter and flour mixture lets the starch disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, glossy sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, ketchup. 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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