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Venison, Hashed

A savory venison hash made with butter, flour, port wine, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and red currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Venison, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the venison into neat slices.

  2. Break up the bones and add them to a pot with the trimmings of the meat.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the port wine, stirring until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sliced venison and trimmings to the sauce, and simmer until heated through.

  2. Stir in the red currant jelly before serving.

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. Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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 meat, which is cooked gently in the sauce until heated through.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted butter to form a roux.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the sauce as it is stirred in smoothly.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tartness that balances the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Make the roux and add the port slowly. Cooking the flour in butter before adding liquid helps prevent lumps. Adding the port gradually while stirring keeps the sauce smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, port wine):

  1. Currantfits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, port wine. 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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