Skip to main content
Main

Venison Soy for the Chafing Dish

A venison dish simmered in butter, currant jelly, Worcestershire sauce, parsley, and cream, served hot with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison Soy for the Chafing Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish over medium heat.

  2. Add the venison and cook until half done.

  3. Stir in the currant jelly, Worcestershire sauce, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  4. Pour in the cream and cover the dish.

  5. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring often.

Serve

  1. Serve on very hot plates with strips of toast.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main protein, cooking quickly in butter to stay tender when sliced thin.
Cream
Creates a rich, smooth sauce that thickens gently as it simmers with the meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich cream and savory meat.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes savory depth and a tangy, umami note to the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for initial cooking and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the venison until half done. Thin slices cook fast, and overcooking makes the meat tough and dry. Stopping at half done lets it finish gently in the cream during the covered simmer, keeping it tender.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, venison, sauce, parsley, pepper, cream. 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