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Hashed Venison

A sauce made from venison trimmings, butter, flour, and red currant jelly, served with venison.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hashed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. If you have venison gravy, warm it up.

  2. If you do not have venison gravy, simmer the trimmings in water for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add flour to the melted butter until it absorbs all the fat, stirring well.

  3. Gradually add the gravy made from the trimmings and the red currant jelly.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil, skim off any foam, and strain it through a sieve.

  5. Add the venison to the sauce and warm it gently without boiling.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  3. Venison + red curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together81 recipes

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

  4. Butter + red curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together495 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + red curranttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 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

Venison trimmings
Provide the meat and flavour that make up the base gravy and the hash.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Absorbs the melted butter and thickens the sauce into a smooth base.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Warm the venison without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes them dry and stringy, so the venison should be heated gently in the sauce just until warmed through.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Currantfits about as well
  3. Red currantthe original
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour. 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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