Name: A Very Excellent Recipe for Serving Cold Mutton or Venison
Ingredients: ½ cup gravy; ¼ teaspoon Nepaul pepper; a pinch of cayenne pepper; ⅓ cup sherry or white wine; 2 teaspoons walnut catsup; 2 teaspoons currant jelly (omit for cold beef); cold mutton or venison

Why it works: Pepper and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Very Excellent Recipe for Serving Cold Mutton or Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Combine the gravy, Nepaul pepper, cayenne pepper, sherry or white wine, walnut catsup, and currant jelly in a chafing dish or blazer, then stir the mixture.
Add the cold meat and warm it, or cook it a little if it is very rare.
If using cold beef, omit the currant jelly.

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 + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sherry + curranttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sherry + walnuttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together188 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly: Adds sweetness and a glossy body that balances the sharp sauce.
Sherry or white wine: Adds acidity and aroma, lifting the flavour of the sauce.
Gravy: Forms the liquid base that carries the other flavourings and warms the meat.

Swap the currant

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

Figfits better
Grapefits better
Cherryfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sherry, walnut, beef, mutton. 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.