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Venison Steak

A parboiled and fried venison steak finished with a gravy of black currant jelly, Worcestershire sauce, herbs, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Venison Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the meat of fat and place it in a pan with water and salt.

  2. Parboil the meat for 20 minutes.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. In another pan, heat the butter thoroughly.

  2. Remove the parboiled meat and fry it in the hot butter.

  3. In the water from the parboiled meat, add black currant jelly, Worcestershire sauce, parsley, cayenne, sweet marjoram, thyme, mace, and port wine.

  4. Once the steaks are cooked, pour the gravy over them.

Serve

  1. Serve on hot plates.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Black currant + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 meat
Forms the steaks, which are parboiled and then fried until cooked.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the surface of the steaks.
Black currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy, balancing the savory meat.
Port wine
Adds depth and mild sweetness to the gravy.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Parboiling the meat. Parboiling in salted water partly cooks the venison before frying, helping it become tender and cook evenly. Boiling for too long can dry out or toughen the meat, so timing matters.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, meat, butter, sauce, parsley, pepper, marjoram. 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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