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Potted Venison

Venison stewed with vinegar, port wine, and spices, then baked and pressed into pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Potted Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the venison

  1. Marinate the venison in vinegar for 1 hour.

  2. Wipe the venison dry.

  3. Rub the venison with port wine.

  4. Season the venison with salt and spices.

Bake

  1. Place the venison in a pie dish with fresh butter and port wine.

  2. Cover the dish with coarse paste or oiled paper.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until well cooked.

  4. If large, bake for several hours.

Pot and store

  1. Drain the venison.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Remove sinews and bones.

  4. Beat the meat in a mortar with the skimmed butter from the gravy.

  5. Press the mixture into pots.

  6. Top the pots with clarified butter.

  7. Seal the pots tightly for storage.

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 + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + port winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 is cooked until tender and then pounded into a spread.
Vinegar
Acidic marinade that begins to tenderise the meat before cooking.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the meat and the cooking juices.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the cooked meat soft and spreadable.

The step that matters

Bake until well cooked, then beat while still moist. Meat that is undercooked can be unsafe, while overcooking dries it out. Beating the meat with the skimmed butter from the gravy helps it hold together as a smooth, spreadable mixture.

“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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