Name: Venison Stew
Ingredients: venison meat, cut into small pieces; potatoes, peeled and halved; seasoning to taste

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

venison meat, cut into small pieces
potatoes, peeled and halved
seasoning to taste

Directions

Boil the venison pieces in water for 2 hours.
Add the halved potatoes and cook until tender.
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.

Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Venison + meattop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together126 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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: Provides the main meat and savory flavor of the stew as it simmers for a long time.
Potatoes: Add starch that softens during cooking and thickens the stew slightly while adding body.