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A Haunch or Neck of Venison

A venison stew cooked with cauliflower, cabbage, turnips, beetroot, and cream, served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Haunch or Neck of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Lay the venison in coarse sea salt for a week.

Cook

  1. Boil the venison in a floured cloth, allowing 15 minutes per pound.

  2. In a separate pot, boil cauliflower, white cabbage, turnips, and beetroot in milk and water.

  3. Mash the turnips with cream and a little butter.

Serve

  1. In a serving dish, layer the cauliflower, mashed turnips, boiled cabbage, and beetroot as desired.

  2. Serve with melted butter on the side 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. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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
Forms the main meat and carries the rich, gamey flavour of the stew.
Turnips
Mash to a smooth, thick texture and add gentle sweetness.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed turnips a smooth, silky texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, enriching the mash and the side of melted butter.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness to the vegetables as they boil.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, flour, milk, cauliflower, turnip, beetroot, cream):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, flour, milk, cauliflower, turnip, beetroot, cream. 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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