Skip to main content
Main

Venison Fry

Venison Fry is a dish of seasoned venison pieces fried in butter and served with sauce.

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

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 them in a pan and shake with a handful of flour.

Fry and serve

  1. In a sauté pan, heat some butter and fry the venison until brown and crisp.

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

  3. Pour your choice of 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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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
Is the main protein, cooked until browned and crisp on the outside.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown more evenly and develop a crisp surface when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning flavour to the crust.
Rich brown gravy or other sauces
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the fried venison when poured underneath.

The step that matters

Frying the venison until brown and crisp. The floured surface needs enough hot butter and room in the pan to brown. Crowding the pieces or using low heat makes them steam and turn soft and greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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

You might also like

Roast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes