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Hashed Venison

A dish of thinly sliced venison cooked with onion, herbs, and a stock-based gravy, finished with port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hashed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Arrange the venison slices in a single layer in a stew pan.

  2. Add venison gravy if available. If no gravy, add a little stock.

  3. Sprinkle the venison with white pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Cover with white paper and place a lid on the stew pan.

Make the gravy

  1. In another stew pan, add the trimmings and lean pieces of venison, onion, thyme, parsley, and mace.

  2. Pour in stock and simmer slowly for one hour.

  3. Strain the liquid and skim off the fat.

  4. Melt the butter in a clean stew pan. Add enough flour to make a roux.

  5. Gradually stir in the strained liquid and the port wine, and let it boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Heat the venison slices on the stove until hot.

  2. Arrange the hot venison on a dish. Pour some gravy over it. Serve the remainder in the center of the dish.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat that is gently heated and served in slices with the gravy.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, thickening the gravy and adding richness.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter, thickening the strained liquid into a smooth gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma to the finished gravy.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stock simmered for the gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after straining. Fat left in the liquid will float on the gravy and make it greasy and cloudy, so it should be skimmed off before the roux is thickened with the liquid.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, onion, thyme, parsley, mace, butter, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, onion, thyme, parsley, mace, butter, flour. 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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