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Venison Chops

Venison chops cooked over a fire and served with a sauce of currant jelly, peppercorns, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Venison Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chops

  1. Dip the venison chops in melted butter.

  2. Broil over a clear fire, turning often to cook evenly.

  3. Season the chops with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the currant sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine hot water, currant jelly, peppercorns, and cloves.

  2. Heat the mixture until the jelly is dissolved.

  3. Place the chops in the saucepan for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the chops to a hot platter and pour the sauce over them.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Currant + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 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

Venison chops
The main protein, which browns on the outside while cooking through.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries seasoning and promotes browning on the chops.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce as it melts into the hot water.

The step that matters

Turning the chops over a clear fire. Turning often keeps the heat from scorching one side before the chops cook evenly through. Venison is lean, so overcooking dries it out quickly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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