Name: Venison, Hashed
Ingredients: breast of venison; coarse sea salt; black pepper; red currant jelly; fried bread

Why it works: Pepper and red currant work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 267 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Venison, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the venison into pieces about 3 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and 1.5 inches thick.
Heat a jar and quickly fry the outside of the venison until browned, without cooking it through.
Serve the hashed venison with fried bread and red currant jelly.

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.

Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together267 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Red currant + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together84 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Venison + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together116 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Venison + red curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together81 recipes

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