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Venison Steak

Venison steak served with a mushroom ketchup gravy, toast, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Venison Steak

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the steak

  1. Broil the venison steak until rare.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and add pepper, salt, and flour.

  2. Stir in the mushroom ketchup and heat until hot.

  3. Cut the steak into small pieces and add to the gravy.

  4. Cover tightly and set aside from the fire or in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with toast and jelly.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 steak
Forms the main protein, providing the meaty flavor and tender, juicy texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the gravy and helping it feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells with the melted butter and liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep, savory umami flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the melted butter. Stirring flour into melted butter and letting it cook briefly coats the starch in fat, so it thickens smoothly without lumps and loses its raw, pasty taste.

“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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