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Hash Venison

Hash Venison is a dish of sliced venison simmered in thickened brown gravy with optional fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and mutton work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hash Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. In a clean saucepan, arrange the venison slices and pour the gravy over them.

  2. Let the venison stand for at least 10 minutes.

Make the stock

  1. For a plain version, boil the venison bones with mutton cutlets, carrot, herbs, and water until reduced by one third.

  2. Strain the liquid, cool it, and skim off the fat.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the saucepan near the fire and slowly bring to a boil.

  2. Heat the gravy, thicken it with arrow-root or brown roux, and mix in the sauce.

  3. Serve the hash immediately in a hot-water dish.

  4. Serve on fried bread 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. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Venison + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 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
Provides the main meat, which is gently heated in the gravy so it stays tender.
Brown gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour that coats the meat and forms the sauce.
Arrow-root or brown roux
Thickens the liquid so it clings to the meat instead of running thin.
Venison bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water to build a richer stock for the plain version.
Mutton cutlets
Add meaty flavour to the stock as it simmers and reduces.

The step that matters

Bring the hash slowly to a boil. Boiling the meat hard toughens its proteins and can make the sauce break or scorch, so gentle heat keeps the slices tender and the gravy smooth.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, sauce, mutton, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, sauce, mutton, bread. 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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