Skip to main content
Main

Venison Pasty

A savory pastry filled with simmered venison and gravy, topped with buttered pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Venison Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the venison into pieces, including fat and lean meat.

  2. Place bones and trimmings in a saucepan with pepper, salt, and enough water or veal broth to cover.

  3. Simmer until a good gravy is formed, then strain it.

  4. Make a rich pastry and roll it out thick.

Assemble

  1. Cover the bottom and sides of a deep dish with the pastry.

  2. Season the meat with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and mace, then place it in the dish.

  3. Pour the prepared gravy and two glasses of port or claret over the meat.

  4. Dot the top with bits of butter rolled in flour.

  5. Cover with a thick lid of pastry and decorate with shapes cut from the pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake for two hours or more, depending on the size.

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 + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 meat, with fat and lean pieces giving a rich, tender filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the rich pastry that encloses the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pastry and top of the pie.
Port or claret wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth to the gravy that moistens the meat.
Neck, breast, and shoulder of venison
Supplies the meat cuts that form the body of the filling.

The step that matters

Simmer the gravy until good and strain it. Simmering bones and trimmings slowly extracts gelatin and flavour; a weak gravy leaves the filling dry and bland once baked.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesRoast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes