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Scotch Hunting Pottage

A hearty deer and ham stew with oats, vegetables, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Deer and onion work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 16 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Simmer the deer meat and bones with mace, sage, fennel, thyme, carrots, onion, leeks, celery, and a little butter in a covered pot until it begins to fry.

  2. Stir until golden, then add 3 quarts of water and 1 quart of ale.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim, season, and boil slowly for 2 hours.

Finish the pottage

  1. Add the diced deer and ham to the broth when nearly cooked.

  2. Strain the broth over the meat, then add the soaked cracked oats and cook for 15 more minutes.

  3. Serve with toasted bread on the side and add chopped savory to the pottage before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Deer + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,485 recipes

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

  3. Fennel + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together337 recipes

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

  4. Mace + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Fennel + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Cracked oats
Swell and thicken the broth, giving the pottage its body as they cook.
Deer meat
Provides the main savoury flavour and substance of the pottage.
Ham
Adds salty, cured meat flavour that deepens the broth.
Ale
Adds malty depth and acidity to the long-simmered broth.
Leeks
Contribute sweet, mild onion flavour to the broth base.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 2 hours after skimming. A slow, steady simmer keeps the broth clear and lets the tough deer meat and bones release gelatin and flavour. A hard boil would toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (deer, mace, sage, fennel, thyme, carrot, clove):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against deer, mace, sage, fennel, thyme, carrot, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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