Skip to main content
Main

Jellied Venison

Venison is boiled with onion, cayenne pepper, cloves, and cinnamon, then set in gelatin with port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Jellied Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Soak the venison in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil the venison with the onion, cayenne pepper, cloves, and ground cinnamon.

  3. Carefully remove the venison when done and place it in a mold.

Set the jelly

  1. Strain the cooking liquid.

  2. Add the port to the strained liquid.

  3. Pour the liquid over the venison.

  4. Add gelatin if the liquid is not sufficient to harden.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the meat that is set inside the jelly.
Gelatin
Helps the cooking liquid set firm when it is not gelling enough on its own.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the cooking liquid.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Adding the port to the strained liquid. Port adds sugar and alcohol, which can change how the liquid sets. Check whether the liquid is firm enough before adding gelatin, since too much gelatin makes a rubbery jelly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, clove, cinnamon, gelatin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, clove, cinnamon, gelatin. 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.

You might also like

Roast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes