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Venison

A preserved venison dish cooked in butter, suet, and seasonings, then stored for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Bone the venison, remove all sinews, and cut it into square collars.

  2. Lard the venison with bacon fat, cutting the lards to the size of your finger and 3 to 4 inches long.

  3. Season the venison with pepper, salt, cloves, and nutmeg.

  4. Roll up the collars and tie them tightly with coarse twine.

Bake in butter

  1. Place them in deep pots with seasonings, fresh butter, and bay leaves at the bottom.

  2. Add the remaining seasoning and butter on top, then cover with finely shredded beef suet.

  3. Seal the pots with coarse paste and bake for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. Remove from the oven and let stand briefly; drain the venison from the gravy.

Preserve and store

  1. Clarify the remaining fat by adding more butter and heating gently, then skim off impurities.

  2. Clean the pots or prepare new ones, adding seasoning and clarified butter at the bottom.

  3. Place the venison in the pots and cover with clarified butter, ensuring it is 1 inch above the meat.

  4. Once thoroughly cold, seal with double paper and place a tile on top.

  5. Store for 6 to 8 months; to serve, briefly immerse in boiling water to release.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 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
Forms the lean meat that becomes tender during long, slow baking.
Fresh butter
Adds moisture and richness, sealing the meat and carrying flavour through the long bake.
Beef suet
Adds fat that bastes the meat from above and enriches the gravy.
Bacon fat
Adds fat and savoury flavour inside the lean meat as it cooks.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that penetrates the meat during cooking.
Nutmeg
Adds warm aromatic flavour that complements the meat and butter.

The step that matters

Sealing the pots with coarse paste. The paste crust must seal the pots airtight so moisture and fat cannot escape during the 4 to 5 hour bake. A poor seal lets the meat dry out and the gravy evaporate.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, nutmeg, butter, beef):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, nutmeg, butter, beef. 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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