Why it works: Venison and red wine work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
A Venison Steak
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the steaks
Cut steaks from the leg, 1-1.5 inches thick.
Broil the steaks for about 5 minutes.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter.
Make the sauce and serve
For sauce, combine red wine and currant jelly in a saucepan.
Add flour and butter, then boil until thickened.
Pour the sauce over the steak and serve very hot.
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.
-
Venison + red winetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together167 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
-
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together443 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
-
Red wine + curranttop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together113 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
-
Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,599 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Venison steaks
- Lean red meat that is cooked quickly under high heat to stay tender and browned.
- Currant jelly
- Adds sweetness and body to the sauce while helping it set as it cools.
- Red wine
- Adds acidity and depth to the sauce, balancing the sweetness of the jelly.
- Flour
- Thickens the sauce so it clings to the steak instead of running off.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a glossy finish to the sauce and seasoned steak.
The step that matters
Broil the steaks for about 5 minutes. Venison is very lean, so overcooking dries it out and toughens it. Brief high heat browns the surface while keeping the inside tender. Cooks should check thickness and doneness early.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, butter, red wine, flour):
- Plumfits better
- Red currantfits better
- Lemonfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, red wine, flour. 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.
More venison steak recipes
You might also like
Roast Venison20 recipes
Venison Pasty7 recipes
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.