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Venison, Shoulder Of, Stewed

A slow-cooked venison shoulder stew with mutton fat, spices, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and mutton 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 ↓

Venison, Shoulder Of, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the venison with salt, cayenne, mace, and sugar.

  2. Lay thin slices of mutton fat over the venison, roll tightly, and bind with tape.

Stew

  1. Place the wrapped venison in a stewpan and cover with stock.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim, and simmer gently until tender, about 3-4 hours.

  3. Turn the venison halfway through cooking.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the tape, place the venison on a dish, and strain the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy, season with salt and cayenne, add red wine, and serve with the meat.

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. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  2. Venison + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 shoulder
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Mutton fat
Adds moisture and richness as it melts into the lean venison during cooking.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.
Sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture for a well-flavoured surface.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A rolling boil toughens the meat's proteins and can break up the shape, so the stock should only barely simmer while the collagen slowly softens over several hours.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, sugar, mutton, red wine):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, sugar, mutton, red wine. 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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