Skip to main content
Main

Venison Pie

A pie filled with stewed venison, onions, and spices, topped with pastry and a wine glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Venison Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine venison, onion, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and enough cold water to cover the meat in a stewpan. Cook until tender.

  2. Roll out the pie crust and line a deep pie plate with it.

  3. Fill the crust with the cooked meat mixture.

  4. In a bowl, mix butter and flour to create flakes. Sprinkle the flakes over the meat in the pie.

Top and bake

  1. Cover the pie with a thick layer of pastry.

  2. Make a hole in the center of the top crust.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  4. In a saucepan, heat port wine with cloves and mace. When the pie is nearly done, pour the heated wine mixture into the pie through the hole in the top crust.

  5. Brush the top crust with beaten egg. Return to the oven until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 through slow cooking in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and flaky texture as it melts into the flour and pastry.
Flour
Combines with butter to form flakes that add structure and texture to the pastry.
Egg
Brushed on top, it helps the crust brown to a golden color.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the filling when poured in hot.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot wine through the top crust. Pouring the wine in only when the pie is nearly done keeps the liquid from soaking the pastry and lets the filling stay moist and flavorful.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, port wine, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, port wine, clove. 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.

You might also like

Roast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes