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Brown Venison Soup

A hearty soup made from venison, butter, water, blood, onion, carrot, spices, and port wine, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Venison Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and add the venison pieces. Cover and stir occasionally, letting it stew for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. In another stew-pan, combine the cold water and blood. Stir constantly over heat until it boils.

  2. Add the venison stew, minced onion, whole carrot, salt, black pepper, and Jamaica pepper to the boiling mixture.

  3. If the venison is young, boil gently for 2 hours; if old, boil for 2½ hours.

  4. Before serving, remove the carrot and bones, leaving some meat in the soup.

  5. Stir in the port wine and let it boil for a short time.

  6. If desired, thicken the soup with a mixture of flour and butter.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 breast
Provides the main meat and body of the soup as it simmers and becomes tender.
Blood
Thickens the soup and adds richness and a deep, dark color when heated.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and a rounded, fruity aroma to the finished soup.
Flour and butter
Form a roux that thickens the soup and gives it a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the blood into boiling water. Blood can curdle or scorch if it is not stirred constantly while heating, which leaves the soup grainy and uneven in color.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, carrot, pepper, port wine, 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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