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Stewed Venison

A venison shoulder stew thickened with browned flour and served in a gravy tureen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Remove the bone from the shoulder of venison.

  2. Fill the cavity with bread crumbs mixed with butter, cayenne, salt, and sherry or port wine.

  3. Add minced fat mutton for extra flavor.

  4. Bind the shoulder with strips of tape or white cloth.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the shoulder in a stew pan and cover with stock or hot water.

  2. Add salt, cayenne, and a glass of wine if desired.

  3. Simmer until very tender.

  4. Remove the bands and strain the gravy.

  5. Thicken the gravy with browned flour and add butter if needed.

  6. Serve in a gravy tureen.

  7. Optionally, brown the shoulder in the oven after removing it from the stew pan.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Shoulder of venison
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Bread crumbs
Soak up butter and seasoned liquid inside the cavity, keeping the meat moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and moisture through the filling and gravy.
Sherry or port wine
Adds acidity and aroma that season the filling and the stew.
Fat mutton
Adds extra fat and flavor to the meat as it cooks.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and serving spoon.

The step that matters

Simmer until very tender. Venison shoulder is lean and connective tissue must break down slowly in moist heat. Boiling hard or rushing toughens the meat, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer until a fork slides in easily.

“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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