Name: Sauce for Broiled Venison
Ingredients: ½ tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon currant jelly; 1 tablespoon boiling water; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Butter and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Sauce for Broiled Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Heat a steak pan until very hot.
Add ½ tablespoon of butter, 1 tablespoon of currant jelly, and 1 tablespoon of boiling water.
Season with ¼ teaspoon of pepper and ¼ teaspoon of salt.
Turn the broiled venison steaks in the sauce once or twice.
Serve immediately while very 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.

Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Currant + peppertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,345 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and helps carry flavor across the sauce and meat.
Currant jelly: Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and thickens the sauce as it melts.