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Potted Venison

Venison is cured with vinegar, wine, spices, then baked, deboned, ground, and pressed into pots with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and red wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 575 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Potted Venison

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and season

  1. If the venison is stale, rub it with vinegar and dry it with a cloth.

  2. Rub it well with red wine and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace.

  3. Place it in a jar and pour over it ½ cup of red wine and 1 pound of butter.

Bake

  1. Bake it at 350°F (175°C) until tender.

Pot and seal

  1. Once done, remove the bones and skin, and beat it in a mortar with the fat and gravy.

  2. Press it hard into pots and pour clarified butter over it.

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. Vinegar + red winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Venison + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Red wine + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Red wine + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Provides the meat that becomes tender during baking and is beaten into the spread.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and forms a fat layer that helps seal the potted meat.
Red wine
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the meat as it bakes.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps freshen meat that is past its best before seasoning.

The step that matters

Press it hard into pots. Firm packing removes air gaps that can let the meat spoil or oxidise. An even surface also lets the clarified butter seal the top completely.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, vinegar, red wine, pepper, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, vinegar, red wine, pepper, butter. 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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