Name: Venison
Ingredients: thinly sliced venison; ½ cup red wine; 1 tablespoon ketchup; 1 tablespoon browning sauce; 1 onion stuck with cloves; ½ anchovy, chopped fine; sippets (toasted bread); sliced lemon (for garnish); red cabbage or currant jelly (for garnish)

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

Combine the venison, red wine, ketchup, browning sauce, onion, and chopped anchovy in a stewing pan.
Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the venison and heat thoroughly.

Serve

Pour the mixture into a soup dish over sippets.
Garnish with sliced lemon and red cabbage or 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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together479 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together849 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison: Provides the meat that is cooked through in the wine and sauce.
Red wine: Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the braising liquid.
Anchovy: Adds a savoury, salty depth that rounds out the sauce.
Browning sauce: Adds colour and a richer, roasted flavour to the stew.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, red wine, ketchup, sauce, onion, anchovy, bread):

Garlicfits better
Capersfits better
Celeryfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, red wine, ketchup, sauce, onion, anchovy, 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.