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Venison Collops

Thin slices of venison cooked in a sauce of brown gravy, port, mushroom and walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Venison Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut nice thin cutlets from the venison.

  2. Season the cutlets well with mixed spices.

Cook and serve

  1. Brown the cutlets in a stew-pan with butter.

  2. Add brown gravy, port or claret, mushroom catsup, walnut catsup, soy sauce, and white wine vinegar.

  3. Stew slowly until the cutlets are cooked through.

  4. Place the cutlets in a dish and strain the sauce over them.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison cutlets
Form the main body of the dish, cooked tender by slow stewing in the sauce.
Butter
Fat for browning the cutlets, adding color and a rich flavor to the surface.
Brown gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the other flavors and keeping the meat moist.
Port or claret
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the sauce as it reduces during stewing.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the meat's richness.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until the cutlets are cooked through. Thin cutlets can toughen if boiled hard or overcooked. A gentle simmer lets the meat cook through while staying tender and keeps the sauce from reducing too fast.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, mushroom, sauce, bread, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, mushroom, sauce, bread, white wine, vinegar. 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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