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Mock Venison

A mutton dish cooked with butter, currant jelly, Madeira wine, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Heat the butter in a chafing dish until hot.

  2. Add the mutton and cover, cooking for 2 minutes.

  3. Turn the mutton and cook for an additional 2 minutes.

  4. Add salt, cayenne pepper, currant jelly, and Madeira wine.

  5. 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.

  1. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Currant + madeira winetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together74 recipes
  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Saddle of mutton
Provides the lean meat that is cooked and served as the main dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps brown the surface of the meat in the pan.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balance the savory meat.
Madeira wine
Adds aroma and acidity, and reduces into a flavorful sauce while simmering.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, pepper, madeira wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, pepper, madeira 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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