Name: Venison Stew
Ingredients: venison, cut into pieces; ½ cup wine (claret or port preferred); ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; juice of ½ lemon; dumplings (see separate recipe)

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 ↓

Venison Stew

Ingredients

venison, cut into pieces
½ cup wine (claret or port preferred)
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
juice of ½ lemon
dumplings (see separate recipe)

Directions

Follow the directions for Stewed Beef with Brown Gravy.
Add the venison pieces to the sauce when done.
Remove the meat to a hot dish before adding the wine.
Stir in the wine, cayenne, and lemon juice.
Drop small balls of dumpling dough into the boiling sauce.
Cover and boil briskly for 10 minutes.
Dish the dumplings around the meat.
Strain the sauce, season as above, and pour it over the meat before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,066 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Venison + winetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together189 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together955 recipes

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