Name: Mock Venison
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 pound mutton, cut into pieces; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 2 tablespoons jelly; ⅓ cup Madeira wine

Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the butter in a chafing dish until hot.
Add the mutton and cover; cook for 2 minutes, then turn the mutton and cook for an additional 2 minutes.
Add salt, cayenne, jelly, and Madeira.
Simmer for 6 minutes and serve hot.

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.

Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + madeira winetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together582 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + madeira winetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Is the main protein that becomes tender and browned as it cooks in the butter.
Jelly: Adds sweetness and gloss, and helps the sauce thicken slightly as it simmers.
Madeira wine: Adds acidity and a rich, aromatic depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Butter: Provides fat for browning the mutton and carrying flavour through the dish.

“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.