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Gravy for Roast or Baked Venison

A savory gravy made from venison scraps, butter, nutmeg, lemon, currant jelly, claret, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Gravy for Roast or Baked Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Cut the venison scraps into small pieces and add them to the pan, basting the venison often.

  3. Add the grated nutmeg, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Simmer slowly until the liquid reduces to half its volume.

  5. Skim and strain the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add currant jelly and claret.

  2. Thicken with browned flour.

  3. Finish with fresh butter 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 scraps
Provide the meat flavour and body that the gravy is built on.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a glossy finish.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of wine flavour as the liquid reduces.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and savoury meat flavour.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and butter flavours.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the liquid reduces to half its volume. Slow simmering concentrates flavour gradually and lets fat and impurities rise for skimming. A hard boil can make the sauce cloudy and greasy and can overreduce it before it is seasoned and thickened.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, venison, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, venison, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, 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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