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Venison, Hashed

A venison hash simmered in a butter‑flour consommé with pickled walnut, onion, and red currant jelly, finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Venison, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Cut the venison into very thin slices.

  2. Stew some rough parts of the venison breast in consommé until cold, then remove all grease.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken ¾ pint of consommé with 1 ounce of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Add the chopped pickled walnut, chopped onion, and red currant jelly.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add a squeeze of lemon and combine with the venison slices in a stewpan.

  6. Let the venison stew in the sauce for 30 minutes.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 slices
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the consommé into a smooth sauce with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the thickened sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the savoury sauce.
Pickled walnut
Adds a sharp, tangy flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the venison in the sauce. Thin slices can toughen or dry out if boiled hard. A gentle simmer lets the meat soften and absorb the sauce's flavour without becoming stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, walnut, red currant, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, walnut, red currant, lemon. 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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