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Venison Strak

Venison Strak is a thick venison steak cooked in butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with optional currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Strak

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steaks

  1. Trim the venison steaks as you would beef steak.

  2. Heat a buttered frying pan over medium heat.

  3. Place the steaks in the pan and cook over a clear fire, turning often until well done; do not serve rare.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the steaks to a hot platter and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and bits of butter.

  2. Set the platter in a warm oven for a moment before serving.

  3. Optionally, add a tablespoon or two of melted currant jelly on top before serving.

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 steaks
Are the main protein; cooking them until well done firms the meat and sets its texture.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning to the surface of the steaks.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the rich, gamey flavour of the venison.

The step that matters

Cooking the steaks until well done. Venison is lean, so cooking it fully while turning often helps the surface brown evenly and the meat cook through without drying out quickly; the record advises against serving it rare.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. 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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