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A Pretty Dish of Venison

Venison steaks served with a currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

A Pretty Dish of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Cut the breast of venison into steaks.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan.

  3. Rub the steaks with salt and pepper, then dip them in flour or rolled crackers.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the steaks until richly browned on both sides, then transfer to a dish and cover.

  2. Dredge a heaping teaspoon of flour into the remaining butter in the pan, stirring until brown.

  3. Add the boiling water and dissolved currant jelly, stirring for a few minutes.

  4. 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.

  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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

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 protein; searing browns the surface for flavour.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the surface, adding richness to the pan sauce.
Flour
Coats the steaks for browning and, browned in the butter, thickens the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour, and sets the sauce's body as it dissolves.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred until evenly browned; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while over-browning turns it bitter and dark, and the roux-like base determines the sauce's thickness and colour.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, pepper, wheat, flour, wine, sugar. 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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