Name: Roasted Venison
Ingredients: Venison; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Butter; Red currant jelly; Madeira wine; Lemons

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 ↓

Roasted Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Season the venison with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Place the venison in a roasting pan and dot with butter.
Roast in the oven until cooked to your liking, about 1 to 1.5 hours.
Serve with red currant jelly, Madeira wine, and lemon slices.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together267 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together309 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together957 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Swap the red currant

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

Orangefits about as well
Limefits about as well
Red currantthe original
Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, madeira wine, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.