Name: Fried Venison Steak
Ingredients: 1 breast of venison, cut into steaks; ¼ pound butter; salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; wheat flour or rolled crackers, for coating; 1 heaping teaspoon flour; 1 small teacup boiling water; 1 tablespoon currant jelly

Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Venison Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Heat the butter in a pan.
Season the venison steaks with salt and pepper.
Coat the steaks in wheat flour or rolled crackers.

Fry and make the sauce

Fry the steaks until rich brown on both sides.
Remove the steaks and cover them with a tin cover.
Dredge 1 heaping teaspoon of flour into the remaining butter in the pan and stir until brown.
Add the boiling water and dissolve the currant jelly in it.
Stir for a few minutes, then strain the sauce over the meat and serve.

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.

Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together443 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,002 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + wheattop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together984 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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: Forms the main meat; searing browns the surface and builds flavour.
Butter: Conducts heat for frying and browns the steaks and the flour for the sauce.
Wheat flour: Coats the steaks for a browned crust and thickens the sauce base.
Currant jelly: Adds sweetness and fruity acidity to the sauce and helps it set glossy.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. The flour must be stirred until it turns brown before the water goes in. Cooking it in the fat develops colour and nutty flavour and removes raw starch taste, and adding the water too early leaves the sauce pale and floury.

Swap the currant

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

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, pepper, wheat, flour. 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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Fried Venison Steak