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A Venison Steak

A venison steak seasoned with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter, optionally served with hot venison gravy, red wine, or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and red wine work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Venison Steak

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut steaks from the leg ½ inch thick.

  2. Broil the steaks for about five minutes.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter.

  4. If desired, pour hot venison gravy over the steak.

  5. Alternatively, pour a mixture of red wine and currant jelly over the steak.

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. Venison + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

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

  3. Red wine + curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison steaks
The lean meat that forms the dish, browning on the outside under high heat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, savoury flavour on the hot steak.
Venison gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth when poured over the steak.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the optional sauce spooned over the steak.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the optional wine sauce, balancing its acidity.

The step that matters

Broiling the steaks. Venison is very lean, so brief high heat browns the outside while keeping the inside tender. Overcooking dries the meat out and makes it tough.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, butter, red wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, red 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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