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Venison Pasty to Keep for Some Time

A venison pasty baked with butter and flour, then cooled and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison Pasty to Keep for Some Time

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the venison

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season venison pieces with pepper, salt, and nutmeg if desired.

  3. Place seasoned meat in a baking dish and add butter on top.

Bake the filling

  1. Mix flour with enough water to form a coarse paste and cover the dish.

  2. Bake for 2 hours in the preheated oven.

  3. Let it cool in a dry place.

Finish and bake the pasty

  1. Remove the crust and line the dish with good pastry.

  2. Pour a small amount of gravy, cover with pastry, and bake for 1 hour until firm.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the meat moist as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the coarse paste that seals the dish and later becomes the pastry.

The step that matters

Letting the baked filling cool before adding the pastry. Cooling lets the meat juices settle and firm slightly, so the new pastry and gravy are not soaked or made soggy when the second bake begins.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, flour. 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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