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Hashed Venison

Hashed Venison is a savory dish of cooked venison mixed with butter, flour, onion, and seasonings, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Hashed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the chopped venison with half the salt and cayenne pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and sauté the onion over low heat for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and stir until it turns brown.

  3. Gradually add the water while stirring continuously.

  4. Mix in the Bovril and the remaining salt and cayenne pepper, cooking for 3 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the venison and cook gently for 5 minutes.

  2. Serve on the buttered toast, adding lemon juice and Madeira if desired.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its main meaty flavour and texture.
Flour
Browns in the butter and thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Bovril
Adds concentrated savoury, meaty depth to the sauce.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and aroma to the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until brown. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred constantly to brown evenly without scorching, since scorched flour turns bitter and dark. Browning it adds nutty flavour and colour to the sauce, and the sauce thickens once the water is added.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, onion, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Red currantfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, onion, 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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