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To Stew Venison

A stew of venison cooked slowly with mutton fat, port wine, pepper, allspice, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Stew Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Let the venison hang until ready to dress.

  2. Remove the bone from the venison.

  3. Beat the meat with a rolling pin.

  4. Mix in slices of mutton fat soaked in port wine.

  5. Sprinkle the meat with pepper and allspice.

  6. Roll the meat tightly.

  7. Tie the rolled meat.

Braise and serve

  1. Place the meat in a stewpan with mutton or beef gravy and port wine.

  2. Simmer covered for 3 to 4 hours until tender.

  3. Remove the tape from the meat.

  4. Place the meat on a dish.

  5. Strain the gravy over the meat.

  6. Serve with currant jelly sauce.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Meat + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  5. Venison + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison meat
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Mutton fat
Adds richness and moisture, basting the lean venison as it cooks.
Port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the meat and gravy.
Mutton or beef gravy
Provides liquid for slow simmering, keeping the meat moist and building the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer covered for 3 to 4 hours until tender. Lean game meat is tough and needs long, gentle, moist heat so its collagen softens. Boiling hard or letting the liquid dry out toughens the fibres and makes the meat stringy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, meat, mutton, port wine, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, meat, mutton, port wine, pepper. 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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