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Potted Venison

A preserved venison spread made with butter, spices, currant jelly, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan over medium heat with spices.

  2. Add venison, currant jelly, and red wine; simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove meat, mince finely, and pound in a mortar until smooth.

  4. Pass through a fine sieve and mix with the cooking butter and gravy.

Pot and seal

  1. Pack into small jars, pressing down tightly, leaving ¼ inch space at the top.

  2. Fill jars with clarified butter, seal tightly, and store for later use.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Venison + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the rich, fatty base that carries the spices and sets the potted texture.
Venison
Provides the meat that is minced and pounded into a smooth, spreadable texture.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of fruity acidity that balances the rich meat and butter.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy as the meat simmers.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat until smooth. Mincing and pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres, so it spreads evenly and holds together with the butter; coarse pieces give a grainy, uneven texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, nutmeg, venison, currant, meat, red wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, nutmeg, venison, currant, meat, red wine. 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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