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Venison Steak Saut

Venison steak sautéed with butter, currant jelly, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 443 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Venison Steak Saut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the venison steak to 1 inch thick.

  2. Heat the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Once hot, add the steak and cook for 10 minutes, turning often.

  2. After 5 minutes, add the currant jelly, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

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

  2. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together955 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

Venison steak
Is the main protein; cooking it quickly in butter browns the outside and keeps the inside tender.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat for browning and a rich flavor.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balance the rich, gamey flavor of the venison.

The step that matters

Adding the currant jelly. Added at the 5-minute mark, the jelly can scorch on the hot pan surface because its sugars darken and burn quickly. Watch the heat and turn the steak to keep the sauce from burning.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, 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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