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Another Way to Cook Venison Steaks

Venison steaks cooked in a pan with a gravy made from their juices, butter, pepper, salt, mustard, vinegar, and walnut ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Way to Cook Venison Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Place the venison steaks in a well-covered pan and heat thoroughly without water.

  2. Remove the steaks when cool enough to handle and press to extract all the juice.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix the extracted juice with butter, pepper, salt, mustard, vinegar, and walnut ketchup in a saucepan until well combined.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the steaks to the covered pan and pour the gravy over them.

  2. Cook gently until the steaks are done, as the meat is partially cooked.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison steaks
Main protein; pressing releases its juice, which becomes the base of the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, giving it a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Walnut ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, slightly sweet and tangy flavour to the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the steaks are done. Venison is lean and dries out and toughens when cooked hard or too long. Gentle, covered heat in the gravy keeps the meat moist while it finishes cooking through.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, pepper, mustard, vinegar, ketchup):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, pepper, mustard, vinegar, ketchup. 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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