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Hash Venison

Hash Venison is a dish of sliced venison simmered in thickened brown gravy, optionally served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 164 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hash Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Arrange the venison slices in a clean saucepan and pour the gravy over them. Let stand 10 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the saucepan near the fire and slowly bring to a boil. Serve immediately in a hot-water dish.

Make the sauce without gravy

  1. If no gravy, break down the venison bones and boil them with mutton cutlets, carrot, herbs, and water or broth until reduced by one third.

  2. Strain liquid, let cool, skim off fat. Heat gravy and thicken with arrowroot or brown roux.

  3. Mix in the same sauce as above and serve on fried bread if desired.

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 + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Arrowroot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Venison + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Venison + carrottop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together169 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
Provides the meat, which is gently heated so it stays tender rather than toughening.
Brown gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour that coats the thin venison slices.
Arrowroot or brown roux
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the meat instead of running off.

The step that matters

Slowly bringing the venison to a boil. Rapid boiling toughens thin meat slices and can make the gravy break or turn grainy. Heating gently and serving straight away keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, carrot, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, carrot, 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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