Name: Venison Steak
Ingredients: Venison steaks; Butter; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Claret wine; Currant jelly; Onions; Lemon slices

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Venison Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Heat a grill over a clear, hot fire.
Butter the grill bars before placing the steaks on them.
Broil the steaks rapidly, turning often to retain juices.
Have a warm dish ready with a spoonful of butter for dipping the cooked steaks.
Season the steaks with salt and pepper, then cover to keep warm.
Heat a little claret wine, add a few spoonfuls of currant jelly, and pour over the steak just before serving.
If frying, cook the steaks like beef, omitting the wine, and serve with onions and lemon slices.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together443 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

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

Swap the currant

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

Limefits better
Grapefits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, pepper, wine, onion, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.