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Mock Venison

A mutton leg cured and simmered to resemble venison, served with currant jelly or sharp venison sauce.

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

Prepare

  1. Hang the leg of mutton in a cool place for several days until it is just about to spoil.

  2. Rub the mutton with ½ cup of pyroligneous acid and let it sit for 10 minutes.

  3. Wash the mutton thoroughly, trim off the knuckle and flap, and cut a few inches from each end if necessary.

Cook

  1. Place the mutton in a close‑shutting stewpot or thick iron saucepan with no additional liquid.

  2. Simmer over low heat for 4.5 to 5 hours, turning it several times for even cooking.

  3. Season with only pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. If the gravy reduces too much, add 2 teaspoons of boiling water or mutton gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in its own juices with currant jelly or sharp venison sauce on the side.

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 + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Provides the meat that is cooked slowly until tender and juicy.
Pyroligneous acid
Adds a smoky, venison-like flavour and aroma to the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat for 4.5 to 5 hours. Low, steady heat in a tightly closed pot lets the tough connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly into tender meat while keeping it moist. Too much heat drives off juices and toughens the muscle fibres.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper. 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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