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To Hash Venison

A venison hash served over toast with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Hash Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine port wine, browning sauce, ketchup, and the onion studded with cloves.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Heat the venison

  1. Add the sliced venison and heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Arrange slices of toast in a soup dish.

  2. Pour the hash over the toast and serve with currant jelly.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  4. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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 meaty base of the hash, with its texture firming as it heats.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and its acidity helps balance the sauce.
Browning sauce
Adds a deep brown colour and savoury, caramel-like flavour to the sauce.
Onion
Its studded cloves and softened sugars add aroma and gentle sweetness to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds tangy acidity and sweetness that give the sauce its rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the venison. Thin venison slices cook very quickly, and prolonged heat toughens lean meat. Add the slices to the hot sauce and heat only until thoroughly warmed.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, port wine, sauce, ketchup, onion, clove):

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, port wine, sauce, ketchup, onion, clove. 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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