Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓
Venison Steak
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.
Cook the steak
Broil the venison steak until rare.
Make the gravy
In a saucepan, melt the butter and add black pepper, coarse sea salt, flour, and mushroom catsup to make a gravy.
Cut the steak into small pieces and add to the hot gravy.
Cover tightly and set aside from the fire or in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.
Serve
Serve with toast and jelly.
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.
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together957 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,253 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 steak
- Is the main protein, cooked rare and then cut into pieces for the gravy.
- Butter
- Melts to form the fat base of the gravy and carries flavour.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and catsup mixture into a gravy.
- Mushroom catsup
- Adds savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
The step that matters
Covering and resting the steak in the gravy. Keeping the pieces covered in hot gravy holds in heat and moisture, so the meat warms through gently without drying out. Flour thickens best when the gravy stays hot and is not boiled hard.
“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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