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Scollops of Venison

Venison cutlets simmered in red wine, espagnole sauce, and consommé with carrots, onion, celery, and parsley, served with glazed vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Scollops of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the cutlets

  1. Fry the venison cutlets until browned, then remove excess grease.

  2. Add red wine, Espagnole sauce, consommé, carrot, onion, celery, and parsley to the pan.

  3. Simmer gently until the cutlets are tender, then transfer them to a sauté pan with some sauce to keep warm.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the remaining sauce through a sieve into a smaller pot.

  2. Clarify the sauce by boiling gently and skimming off any impurities.

  3. Reduce the sauce to the proper consistency, then pass it through a tamis into a bain‑marie.

Serve

  1. To serve, dish the cutlets, fill the center with glazed carrots and turnips, and arrange glazed button onions around the dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cutlets and serve.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison cutlets
Main protein that becomes tender through slow simmering in the sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, and helps build the flavour of the sauce as it reduces.
Espagnole sauce
Provides the thick brown sauce base that gives body and rich savoury flavour.
Consommé
Adds meaty savoury liquid that thins the sauce and deepens its flavour.
Carrot
Contributes sweetness and aromatic flavour to the simmering liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic savoury flavour to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the cutlets gently. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the venison break down slowly, making the meat tender. Vigorous boiling toughens and dries the muscle fibres and can make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, red wine, sauce, carrot, celery, parsley, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, red wine, sauce, carrot, celery, parsley, turnip. 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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