Why it works: Port wine and red currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓
Venison, Hashed
Ingredients
Directions
Make the stock
Cut the venison into neat slices and break up the bones.
Place the bones, meat trimmings, and any venison gravy in a stewpan.
Cover with cold water and simmer gently for 1 hour.
Add onion and herbs if using.
Make the sauce
Melt the butter in a stewpan.
Stir in the flour.
Fry until brown.
Add the strained stock.
Stir until boiling.
Put in the meat, port wine, red currant jelly, salt, and pepper.
Cover the stewpan closely.
Let it sit on the stove for 20 minutes without boiling.
Serve
Serve hot, garnished with croutons or fried/toasted bread.
Pass red currant jelly separately.
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.
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Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together239 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Red currant + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together267 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
- Flour
- Cooked with the butter into a browned roux that thickens the stock into a sauce.
- Port wine
- Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the sauce.
- Red currant jelly
- Adds sweetness and a tart fruitiness that balances the rich meat and gravy.
The step that matters
Frying the flour until brown. Cooking the flour in butter drives off raw starch taste and builds a nutty, browned roux. Stirring constantly prevents scorching, and the roux must be cooked before the stock is added so it thickens smoothly without lumps.
Swap the onion
The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, port wine, red currant, pepper):
- Shallotfits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Carrotfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, port wine, red currant, pepper. 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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