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Venison Steaks Saute

Sautéed venison steaks served with pan gravy, parsley, lemon, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Venison Steaks Saute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the venison into steaks about 1 inch thick.

  2. Roll each steak in flour and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Sauté

  1. Heat a skillet or dripping pan over high heat and add enough butter to almost cover the meat.

  2. Place the steaks in the skillet, cooking until blood appears on the top side, then turn them.

  3. Continue cooking, turning at intervals, until no red shows when pierced with a fork, about 20 to 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer the steaks to a hot platter and pour some of the pan gravy over them.

  2. Garnish with parsley and quartered lemons, and serve with currant jelly on the side.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Saddle of venison
Is the main protein, cooked into steaks that turn firm and brown as the surface sears.
Flour
Coats the steaks so they brown well and help thicken the pan gravy.
Butter
Conducts heat to the steaks and adds fat for browning and rich flavour.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, gamey meat.

The step that matters

Turning and doneness check. Turning only once blood appears and testing with a fork keeps the meat from overcooking. Lean venison dries out and toughens quickly once past the desired doneness, so timing matters more than the clock.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, flour, butter, parsley, lemon. 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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