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Hashed Venison

A dish of leftover venison simmered in a sauce made from mutton gravy, flour, butter, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and mutton work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hashed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Stew the bones and trimmings in water for an hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add enough flour to absorb the butter and stir well.

  3. Gradually add the gravy from the trimmings and red currant jelly.

  4. Bring to a boil and skim.

  5. Strain through a sieve.

Finish

  1. Add the venison to the sauce.

  2. Warm gently without boiling.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Venison + red curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together81 recipes

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

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

Leftover venison
Provides the main meat, which is warmed through in the sauce rather than cooked again.
Mutton gravy or bones and trimmings
Supplies the savoury meat flavour and most of the liquid for the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Absorbs the butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruity note that balances the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Warm gently without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the sauce tighten or separate, so gentle heat keeps the venison tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the red currant

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

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

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