Name: Venison Steak
Ingredients: 1½ inches thick venison steak; 2 tablespoons butter; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; ⅓ cup port wine; 1 tablespoon red currant jelly

Why it works: Port wine and red currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Venison Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a chafing dish.
Season the venison steak with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Add the steak to the chafing dish.
Pour in ⅓ cup of port wine and 1 tablespoon of red currant jelly.
Cook one side until done.
Turn the steak and cook the other side to your desired doneness.

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.

Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together239 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together267 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,499 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together957 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 steak: Is the main protein that is cooked and browned in the pan.
Port wine: Adds acidity and sweetness to the pan sauce as it reduces with the juices.
Red currant jelly: Adds sweetness and body to the sauce, helping it cling to the meat.

“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.