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Venison Fry

Venison pieces are seasoned, coated in flour, fried in butter, and served with gravy or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the venison pieces with pepper and salt.

  2. Place the venison in a pan and shake with a handful of flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated venison in a sauté pan with butter until brown and crisp.

  2. Dish up the venison in a pile, garnishing with fried parsley.

  3. Pour rich brown gravy, essence of anchovies, or any preferred sauce underneath and serve hot.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a firm, tender bite when fried.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns and crisps in the pan instead of steaming.
Butter
Conducts heat in the sauté pan and adds richness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Frying the coated venison in butter. Flour coating and a hot pan with enough fat give browning and a crisp crust. Crowding the pan or using low heat lets the meat steam and turn grey and soft.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, flour, butter. 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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