Name: Venison Puffs
Ingredients: cold venison, thinly sliced; thick gravy; currant jelly; puff pastry; coarse sea salt; 1 egg white

Why it works: Venison and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 443 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Venison Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Mix thick gravy with a little currant jelly.
Roll out the puff pastry very thin and cut it into square pieces.
Place enough venison in each square to fill it and season with coarse sea salt.
Fold the pastry over to make light puffs and seal them.
Brush each puff with the egg white.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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.

Venison + curranttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together443 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Venison + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together159 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,734 recipes

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