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Venison in a Chafing Dish

Venison served in a sauce of butter, sherry, jelly, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Venison in a Chafing Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the jelly and let it dissolve completely.

  3. Stir in the port wine and about ½ cup of boiling water, along with pepper and salt to taste.

  4. When it boils, stir in the corn‑starch blended with a little cold water and boil for 1 minute.

Heat and serve

  1. Add the pieces of cold or broiled venison, turning them in the sauce and heating for 2 minutes.

  2. Serve while keeping the meat well covered with the sauce.

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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sherry + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Is the main protein, served sliced and warmed through in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Currant or grape jelly
Provides sweetness and fruity flavour that balances the wine and the gamey meat.
Cooking sherry or port wine
Adds depth and acidity to the sauce, building its aromatic character.
Corn-starch
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it body so it clings to the meat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn-starch slurry. Cornstarch must be fully blended in cold water first and then boiled, because it thickens only once it reaches a boil. Added dry or to a sauce that is not boiling, it clumps or stays thin.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, sherry, corn, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, sherry, corn, pepper. 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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