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Venison Hashed

A dish of sliced venison simmered with gravy, butter, flour, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Venison Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the venison into small slices.

  2. Place the trimmings and bones in a saucepan and cover with water.

  3. Stew for 1 hour, then strain the liquid into a stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add bits of butter rolled in flour and any leftover gravy.

  2. Stir in currant jelly and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the sliced venison and heat through without boiling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Venison + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 meat
Provides the main protein and the bulk of the hash.
Butter and flour
Rolled together and added to the liquid, they thicken the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich meat flavour.

The step that matters

Heat the venison without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes the slices dry and stringy. Keeping the sauce just below a boil heats the venison gently so it stays tender.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, meat, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Currantthe original
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, meat, butter, flour. 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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