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Jellied Venison

A preserved venison dish set in a gelatinous stock made with salt, onion, spices, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Jellied Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the venison in salted water for 30 minutes.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the venison with the onion, cayenne pepper, cloves, and ground cinnamon.

  2. Carefully remove the venison and place it in a mold.

  3. Strain the cooking liquid, add the port, and pour it over the venison.

  4. Add gelatin if the liquid is not enough to harden.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers.
Gelatin
Helps the cooking liquid set into a firm jelly as it cools.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Adding gelatin only if needed. Gelatin sets the liquid into a jelly only when the natural gelatin from the cooking liquid is too weak. Adding it without checking can make the jelly too stiff, while too little leaves it unset.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, clove, cinnamon, gelatin):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, clove, cinnamon, gelatin. 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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