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Venison Steak

A grilled venison steak served with butter, salt, pepper, claret wine, currant jelly, onions, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Grill the steaks

  1. Heat a grill over a clear, hot fire.

  2. Lightly butter the grill bars before placing the steaks on it.

  3. Broil the steaks quickly, turning often to retain juices.

  4. Have a warm platter ready with a piece of butter the size of an egg for dipping the steaks.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  6. Cover to keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat a little claret wine.

  2. Add a few spoonfuls of currant jelly.

  3. Pour over the steak just before serving.

Serve

  1. Optionally, fry the steaks like beef, omitting the wine.

  2. Serve with onions.

  3. Serve with slices of lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Venison steaks
Lean meat that is seared quickly so the juices stay inside the steak.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the steaks brown on the grill.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and depth to the warmed pan sauce poured over the steak.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body that balances the wine and the gamey meat.

The step that matters

Broil the steaks quickly, turning often. Venison is very lean, so high heat and frequent turning seal the surface and help keep juices in. Overcooking dries the meat and makes it tough.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. 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.

“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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