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Baked Venison Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed venison and vegetables, topped with a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Baked Venison Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Season the venison with salt and pepper, then roll in flour.

  2. Fry the venison in a pan until nicely browned.

Make the filling

  1. Add the onions, carrot, turnip, and parsley to the pan.

  2. Pour in enough stock to cover the ingredients and stew until tender.

  3. Thicken the mixture and adjust seasoning as needed.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and cover with meat pie paste.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 browns for flavour and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the venison so it browns well and helps thicken the stewing liquid.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and savoury depth to the filling.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that stews the meat and vegetables until tender.

The step that matters

Fry the venison until nicely browned. Browning creates deep savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Meat that is crowded or steamed in the pan will grey instead of browning, leaving the filling tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, flour, carrot, turnip, parsley, meat):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, flour, carrot, turnip, parsley, meat. 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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