Skip to main content
Main

Venison, Gravy for

A gravy made from venison or mutton trimmings simmered in water, seasoned with salt, pepper, port, and sugar browning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Venison, Gravy for

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Fry the venison trimmings or mutton chops in butter until browned on both sides.

  2. Pour boiling water over the meat and let it simmer gently until reduced by half.

  3. Skim off any fat and season with salt.

  4. Let the gravy cool, then remove all fat and serve in a tureen.

  5. For a flavored gravy, stew the optional carrot, shallot, clove, and bay leaf with the other ingredients.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, boil the gravy, season with salt, add port and sugar browning.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Carrot + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison trimmings or mutton
Browning in butter builds the meaty flavour that forms the base of the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying the meat, promoting browning on the surface.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Let the gravy cool and remove all fat. Fat separates and floats as the gravy cools, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Removing it while cool keeps the finished gravy clear and prevents a greasy mouthfeel.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, sugar, shallot, clove):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, sugar, shallot, clove. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRoast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes