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Venison Steak

Venison steak prepared by soaking in vinegar, frying, and stewing in milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Venison Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the frozen venison in water with vinegar until ice forms on the meat.

  2. Remove the meat from the soaking liquid.

  3. Scrape off the ice from the meat.

  4. Pat the meat dry.

  5. Dust the venison with flour.

Brown and stew

  1. Heat butter in a pan.

  2. Brown the meat on both sides.

  3. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

  4. Add the milk to the pan.

  5. Cover the pan.

  6. Reduce heat and let the steak stew slowly for 1.5 hours.

Optional larding

  1. If the steak is very dry, lard it with salt pork before frying.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Lean meat that becomes tender during slow, covered stewing.
Butter
Fat that carries heat for browning and adds rich flavor to the surface.
Flour
Dusting helps the surface brown and thickens the milk into a sauce.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess as the steak stews in the pan.
Vinegar
Acid in the soaking liquid helps soften the meat's surface.
Salt pork
Adds fat to a dry steak when larded, keeping it moister during cooking.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and stew slowly. Keeping the pan covered on low heat lets the tough muscle fibers soften slowly without drying out. Boiling hard or letting the milk scorch on the base of the pan would toughen the meat and spoil the sauce.

“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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