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Venison-pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Venison-pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Season the venison with pepper, coarse sea salt, allspice, and cloves.

  2. Flour each steak and place it in a pie dish.

  3. Pour in ½ cup of water and cover with short crust pastry.

  4. If the venison is very lean, add slices of ham or bacon.

  5. For added flavor, mix bread crumbs, chopped ham, parsley, and pepper with 1 egg to form small balls and add to the pie.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, allspice, clove, flour, ham, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, allspice, clove, flour, ham, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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