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Venison

Venison slices simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, powdered sugar, red wine, gravy, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the venison

  1. Fry the venison slices until nicely browned.

  2. Keep the browned venison slices warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in the same pan.

  2. Stir in flour until thick and brown.

  3. Add powdered sugar, gravy from bones, and red wine.

  4. Mix the sauce until thick as cream.

  5. Squeeze in lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Warm the venison in the sauce.

  2. Serve the venison with sauce poured over it.

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 + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Is the main protein, browned for flavour and then gently warmed in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and browns it slightly as it cooks in the butter.
Butter
Carries the flour for browning and adds rich fat flavour to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine and savoury gravy.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour, reducing into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in flour until thick and brown. Cooking flour in butter until it browns develops a nutty flavour and colour, and it must be stirred constantly so it does not scorch. Adding liquid too early leaves the sauce lumpy and pale.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, flour, sugar, red wine):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, flour, sugar, red wine. 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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