Skip to main content
Main

To Boil Venison Steaks

A grilled venison steak served with butter, salt, pepper, currant jelly gravy, and optional lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Boil Venison Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grill

  1. Preheat the grill and grease the grill with a bit of suet.

  2. Dip the venison steaks in rolled crackers or wheat flour.

  3. Place the steaks on the grill over a bright, clear fire of coals.

Grill and serve

  1. When one side is done, transfer the steak to a dish to catch the juices.

  2. Turn the steaks on the grill and let them broil nicely.

  3. In a hot dish, add butter, salt, and black pepper.

  4. Mix currant jelly with hot water or wine until liquid.

  5. Lay the steaks in the dish, turning them in the gravy, and serve hot.

  6. Alternatively, serve simply with butter, pepper, and salt, or with lemon slices on top.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Venison steaks
Main protein; grilling sears the surface while the inside stays tender and juicy.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and combines with the juices to form a simple gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy, balancing the savoury meat.
Rolled crackers or wheat flour
Light coating that helps the surface brown and seal in juices during grilling.

The step that matters

Turning the steaks on the grill. Turning too early or too often stops a good sear from forming and can dry out the meat. Let one side brown fully before turning, so the juices stay inside the steak.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, wheat, pepper, currant, wine, butter, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, wheat, pepper, currant, wine, butter, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesWheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipes