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Sweet Sauce, or Gravy for Venison

A savory gravy made with venison stock, port wine, butter, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce, or Gravy for Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the shallots, ham, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, cloves, mace, and peppercorns.

  3. Cook gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually add 1 pint of strong veal stock or gravy.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce and skim off the fat before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

  5. Venison + port winetop 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

Common venison gravy
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the sauce.
Port wine or claret
Adds fruity depth and acidity that balance the rich fat and meat flavors.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel.
Shallots
Soften during gentle cooking, adding mild sweetness and aroma to the base.
Ham
Contributes salty, savory depth to the flavor of the sauce.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body as it softens in the base.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes. A gentle simmer lets flavors extract slowly without reducing too fast or breaking the fat into the sauce. A hard boil can make the gravy cloudy and greasy, so keep the surface barely moving.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, port wine, sugar, butter, shallot, ham, carrot):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, port wine, sugar, butter, shallot, ham, carrot. 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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