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Venison Stew

A stew of venison pieces simmered with wine, cayenne, lemon, and dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Venison Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Follow the directions for Stewed Beef with Brown Gravy.

  2. After the sauce is done, remove the meat to a hot dish.

  3. Add the wine, cayenne, and lemon juice to the sauce.

Cook the dumplings

  1. Drop small balls of dumpling dough into the boiling sauce.

  2. Cover and boil briskly for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Dish the dumplings around the meat.

  2. Strain the sauce.

  3. Season the sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce over the meat before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Venison + winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together189 recipes

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

  5. Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together955 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 becomes tender through the stewing directions it follows.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.
Dumplings
Add soft, starchy body that soaks up the sauce and rounds out the dish.

The step that matters

Boil the dumplings briskly, covered. Dumplings need a steady boil with the lid on so the steam cooks them through and they stay light. Lifting the lid or letting the sauce drop to a simmer can leave them dense and gummy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, wine, 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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