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Venison Steaks

Grilled venison steaks served with a butter, pepper, salt, and currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Grill

  1. Preheat a grill over the fire and rub the bars with butter.

  2. Place the venison steaks on the grill for a few minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a hot dish, combine butter, pepper, salt, and melted currant jelly.

  2. Transfer the venison to the dish and turn it to coat with the gravy.

  3. Serve with additional currant jelly.

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
Main protein; cooked over direct heat to brown the outside while keeping the inside tender.
Butter
Greases the grill bars to prevent sticking and adds richness to the gravy.
Currant jelly
Melts into the gravy, adding sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Placing the venison on the grill. Venison is very lean, so overcooking dries it out quickly. A few minutes over a hot fire sears the surface while leaving the centre juicy, so watch closely rather than leaving it unattended.

Swap the currant

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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