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Venison Pasty

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Venison Pasty

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.

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Layer the venison slices in a deep dish, alternating with slices of fat.

  3. Season each layer with salt, pepper, and allspice.

  4. In a pot, stew the venison trimmings in enough water to cover for 1 hour, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour the gravy over the layered meat.

  6. If using wine, mix equal parts of meat broth and claret, or substitute with port wine and lemon juice.

  7. If the venison is tough, bake it for 1 hour before adding the crust.

  8. Roll out the pastry to ¼ inch thick and cover the dish, sealing the edges with water.

  9. Cut slits in the top crust for steam to escape and brush with beaten egg.

  10. Bake the pasty slowly for 2 hours.

  11. Serve hot or cold.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, allspice, port wine, lemon, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, allspice, port wine, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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