Skip to main content
Main

To Hash Venison

A venison hash simmered with wine, mushroom ketchup, browning sauce, and onion, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Hash Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine red wine, mushroom ketchup, browning sauce, and the onion in a stew pan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the venison and boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

  2. Pour the hash into a soup dish and serve with currant jelly around it.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main body of the dish; thin slices cook quickly and turn tough if overcooked.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, helping the sauce taste rich and balanced.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness that mellows as it cooks in the liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes savoury, umami depth to the sauce.
Browning sauce
Adds dark colour and a smoky, savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the venison for 3 to 4 minutes. Thinly sliced venison is lean and cooks very quickly. Boiling it too long toughens the meat and dries it out, so it should be added last and timed closely.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, red wine, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, onion, clove):

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, red wine, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, onion, clove. 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.

More venison hash recipes

Cold 4 See all 57 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesRoast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes