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Fried Venison Steak

A pan‑fried venison steak served with a butter‑flour sauce flavored with currant jelly or wine and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the venison breast into steaks.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan.

  3. Rub the steaks with salt and pepper.

  4. Dip the steaks in flour or rolled crackers.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry until rich brown on both sides.

  2. Remove the steaks to a dish and cover with a tin cover.

  3. Dredge the flour into the butter in the pan and stir until brown.

  4. Add boiling water and dissolved currant jelly, then stir for a few minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce over the meat.

Serve

  1. 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.

  1. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. 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 breast
Is the main protein, cut into steaks that cook through and brown in the pan.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and carries flavour, while browning the meat surface.
Wheat flour
Coats the steaks for browning and, once dredged into the butter, thickens the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruit acidity that balance the rich, browned meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Stirring the flour into the butter and cooking until brown builds flavour and colour, but scorching gives a bitter taste. Thickening also depends on cooking the flour, so the sauce should be stirred steadily and not left unattended.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. 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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