Name: To Stew a Shoulder of Venison
Ingredients: 1 shoulder of venison, boned; Cayenne pepper, to taste; Coarse sea salt, to taste; 1 teaspoon ground mace; A small amount of allspice; Thin slices of fat from a well-fed loin of mutton; Good stock made from equal parts beef and mutton

Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Stew a Shoulder of Venison

Ingredients

1 shoulder of venison, boned
Cayenne pepper, to taste
Coarse sea salt, to taste
1 teaspoon ground mace
A small amount of allspice
Thin slices of fat from a well-fed loin of mutton
Good stock made from equal parts beef and mutton

Directions

Prepare the venison

Flatten the boned shoulder of venison on a table.
Season it well with cayenne, salt, ground mace, and a small amount of allspice.
Lay thin slices of mutton fat over the seasoned venison.
Roll and bind the venison tightly.

Stew

Place it in a vessel nearly its size.
Pour enough stock over it to nearly cover the meat.
Stew it slowly for 3 to 3.5 hours.

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.

Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together279 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison shoulder: Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Mutton fat: Adds richness and moisture as it melts into the meat during stewing.
Stock: Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the rolled meat and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Stew it slowly for 3 to 3.5 hours. Low, slow heat lets the tough connective tissue in the shoulder break down into gelatin, so the meat turns tender rather than dry and stringy. Keeping the liquid below a hard boil prevents the meat from tightening.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, allspice, mutton, beef):

Clovefits better
Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, allspice, mutton, beef. 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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To Stew a Shoulder of Venison