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To Hash Venison

A venison hash cooked in a gravy of bone broth, port wine, mushroom ketchup, and currant jelly, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Hash Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the bone and trimmings of the cold haunch in a little water.

  2. Season with peppercorns and coarse sea salt.

  3. Strain the mixture and thicken it with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Add port wine, mushroom ketchup, and currant jelly.

Serve

  1. Heat the venison slices thoroughly in the gravy.

  2. Serve with slices of toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Port wine + venisontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the meat of the dish, becoming tender when gently heated in the gravy.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth, coating body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the savoury gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid so it thickens smoothly; adding it raw or unevenly can leave lumps or a pasty taste in the gravy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Currantthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, port wine, mushroom, ketchup, venison, 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.

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