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Venison Stewed

A stew made from venison, mutton fat, port wine, gravy, pepper, coarse sea salt, and spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Venison Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. If the venison is too lean, steep mutton fat in port wine for several hours and stew it with the venison.

  2. Cut the venison into pieces with the bones or remove the bones and beat the meat with a rolling pin.

  3. Season the meat with pepper, coarse sea salt, and spice, then roll it up with its own fat or mutton fat and tie it tightly.

  4. If using the latter method, boil the bones down for gravy; otherwise, use gravy from other meat.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the meat in a vessel that just holds it, add ½ cup port wine and 1 pint gravy, cover tightly, and stew slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Strain the gravy over the meat; do not thicken it.

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

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

  2. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mutton + port winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Mutton fat
Adds moisture and richness to lean venison during the long stew.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and acidity to the stewing liquid, deepening its flavour.
Gravy
Provides the savoury liquid in which the meat stews and is later strained over it.

The step that matters

Stew slowly in a tightly covered, snug vessel. Long, gentle heat with a lid breaks down the tough connective tissue in venison while trapping moisture. Too much heat or an open pot can dry and toughen the meat.

“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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