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Stewed Venison

A stew of venison shoulder braised with bread crumbs, butter, cayenne, salt, sherry or port wine, and mutton fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Remove the bone from the underside of the venison shoulder.

  2. Fill the space with bread crumbs mixed with butter, cayenne, salt, and sherry or port wine.

  3. Add minced fat mutton for extra flavor.

  4. Bind the shoulder into shape with strips of tape or white cloth.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the shoulder in a stew pan and cover with stock or hot water.

  2. Add salt, cayenne, and a glass of wine if desired.

  3. Simmer until the venison is very tender.

  4. Remove the bands and transfer the venison to a serving dish.

  5. Strain the gravy.

  6. Thicken it with browned flour.

  7. Add butter if necessary.

  8. Serve the gravy in a tureen.

  9. Optionally, brown the shoulder in the oven after removing it from the stew pan.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder of venison
Main meat that becomes tender and rich after long, slow simmering.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and butter in the stuffing, keeping the filling moist and binding it.
Sherry or port wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stuffing and gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Fat mutton
Adds extra fat and savory flavor to the stuffing and gravy.

“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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