Skip to main content
Main

To Stew a Shoulder of Venison

A slow‑cooked venison shoulder wrapped in mutton fat and seasoned, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 a Shoulder of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Let the venison hang until ready to dress.

  2. Remove the bone and beat the meat with a rolling pin.

  3. Layer mutton fat soaked in port wine inside the meat.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper and allspice, then roll tightly and tie.

Stew and serve

  1. Place in a stew pan with gravy and port wine.

  2. Simmer covered on low heat for 3 to 4 hours until tender.

  3. Remove the tape, place the meat on a dish, and strain the gravy over it.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison shoulder
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Mutton fat
Adds moisture and richness as it melts into the meat during slow cooking.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the gravy and helps flavour the meat.
Gravy
Keeps the meat moist during simmering and forms the sauce served with it.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Simmer covered on low heat. Slow, gentle simmering breaks down the tough connective tissue in a shoulder cut. Boiling hard would toughen the muscle fibres and dry the meat, so keep the heat low and the pot covered.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Red currantfits about as well
  2. Currantthe original
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

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

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesRoast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipes