Skip to main content
Main

Venison Stew

A stew of venison and potatoes seasoned to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Meat and potato work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Venison Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Cut the venison into small pieces.

  2. Boil the meat for 2 hours.

  3. Add peeled potatoes, cutting large ones in half.

  4. Season to taste.

Finish

  1. Once cooked, skim off any fat, thicken the gravy, and pour it over the stew.

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. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Venison + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison meat
Forms the main body of the stew and, after long cooking, becomes tender as its connective tissue softens.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, which helps thicken the surrounding liquid as they cook.

The step that matters

Boil the meat for 2 hours. A rolling boil toughens meat by tightening its proteins, while a gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly into tender, moist meat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

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

More venison stew recipes

Cold 7 See all 73 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes