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A Nice Stew From Cold Venison

A stew made from venison fragments, bones, and cold sliced meat, flavored with gravy, butter, flour, ketchup, claret, currant jelly, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

A Nice Stew From Cold Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Make a gravy from the fragments and bones of venison, adding mutton gravy if desired.

  2. Let the gravy simmer, then skim it.

Finish the stew

  1. Stir in browned butter thickened with flour, ketchup, claret, and currant jelly.

  2. Squeeze in lemon juice and bring to a boil.

  3. While simmering, add the thinly sliced cold venison.

  4. Garnish with pickles, lemon slices, and fried bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

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

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

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

Venison
Provides the main meaty flavor of the stew.
Browned butter
Adds nutty aroma and richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body that balances the savory gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty flavors.

The step that matters

Adding the cold venison while simmering. Thin slices of cold meat cook quickly and turn tough and dry if boiled hard. Keeping the gravy at a gentle simmer, after the lemon juice and boil, keeps the slices tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, mutton, butter, flour, currant, bread):

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, mutton, butter, flour, currant, bread. 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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