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Fricasseed Venison

A slow-cooked venison dish with butter, flour, celery, onion, tomato, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricasseed Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until browned.

  2. Slowly add the flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the celery, onion, tomato, and stock, stirring to combine.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the venison strips and mix well.

  2. Cover the saucepan and place it in the Caloric cooker for 5 to 6 hours using one radiator.

  3. When ready to serve, season with salt, pepper, paprika, and Worcestershire sauce.

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. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns in the pan to add a nutty, toasted flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that coats the venison.
Venison steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, gentle cooking.
Stock
Forms the liquid that cooks the venison and makes up the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Adding flour slowly while stirring keeps it from clumping. Lumps form when flour meets hot liquid all at once, and they are hard to remove later.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, celery, tomato, venison, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, celery, tomato, venison, pepper, sauce. 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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