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To Stew a Shoulder of Venison

A slow‑cooked venison shoulder stewed with mutton fat, pepper, allspice, broth, and port wine, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Stew a Shoulder of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Let the venison hang until it is sweet.

  2. Remove the bone and beat the meat with a rolling pin.

  3. Lay soaked mutton fat on the meat and sprinkle with pepper and allspice.

  4. Roll the meat tightly and tie it.

Stew

  1. Place it in a stew pan with gravy or broth, port wine, pepper, and allspice.

  2. Cover and simmer on low heat for 3 to 4 hours until tender.

  3. Remove the tape.

Serve

  1. Place the meat on a dish and strain the gravy over it.

  2. Serve with currant jelly.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  5. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 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 shoulder
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Mutton fat
Basting fat that melts into the meat, adding moisture and rich flavour during stewing.
Gravy or broth
Liquid that braises the meat and becomes the sauce once strained.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering on low heat until tender. Venison shoulder is connective-tissue-rich and lean. Long, gentle simmering at low heat converts collagen to gelatin, making the meat tender and moist, while a hard boil would toughen the muscle fibres.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, mutton, pepper, allspice, port wine):

  1. Red currantfits about as well
  2. Currantthe original
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, mutton, pepper, allspice, port wine. 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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