Name: Stewed Venison
Ingredients: cold venison; gravy from the venison; flour; butter; ketchup; red currant jelly; fried bread

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the cold venison.

Make the stew

Stew the venison in its own gravy.
Dredge flour over the venison.
Mix butter, ketchup, and red currant jelly, then add to the stew.

Serve

Serve with square pieces of fried bread on top.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Red currant + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together84 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,435 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together957 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 becomes tender when stewed slowly in its gravy.
Flour: Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving the stew a body.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Red currant jelly: Adds sweetness and a tart fruitiness that balances the rich meat.
Ketchup: Adds tangy sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.

Swap the red currant

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

Red currantthe original
Currantfits about as well
Raisinfits less well
Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, flour, butter, ketchup, bread. 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.