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Venison Pasty

A puff pastry pasty filled with diced venison, butter, water, and red wine, baked for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and red wine work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Venison Pasty

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Bone the venison and cut it into dice.

  2. Season the meat and place the fat on top.

Assemble the pasty

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and cover it with a thick crust.

  2. Add butter and water to the pie, sealing the edges well.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 2 hours at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Make gravy from the bones and pour it hot into the pasty with red wine.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long slow bake.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky crust that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which helps the pastry stay flaky and the filling taste rounded.
Red wine
Adds depth of flavour and mild acidity to the gravy poured into the pasty.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges well. A tight seal traps steam and meat juices inside, so the filling cooks gently in its own moisture. Gaps let juices escape and leave the meat dry.

“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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