Skip to main content
Main

Mock Venison

A mutton loin marinated with brown sugar, black pepper, and port wine, then slow‑cooked and served with venison‑style gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the mutton for several days.

  2. Bone the mutton.

  3. Remove all kidney fat and skin from the upper fat.

Cure

  1. Mix the brown sugar and ground black pepper.

  2. Rub the mixture into the mutton.

  3. Pour the port wine over the mutton.

  4. Cover the mutton with the skin.

  5. Rub and turn the mutton daily for five days.

  6. Cover the mutton with the skin.

Wrap and serve

  1. Wrap the mutton as you would venison.

  2. Serve with made gravy and sauces typically used for venison.

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. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + port winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Pepper + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Sugar + port winetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Mutton
Main meat; the long hanging and curing period tenderises and deepens its flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown and form a glaze.
Ground black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and a spicy crust to the outside of the meat.
Port wine
Adds fruity sweetness and moisture, carrying flavour into the meat during curing.

The step that matters

Rub and turn the mutton daily for five days. Turning keeps the sugar, pepper and port in contact with every surface, so the cure penetrates evenly. Without it, some areas stay dry or unevenly seasoned.

“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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes