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Venison Pasty

A slow‑cooked venison dish with sugar, vinegar, port wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Venison Pasty

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Rub the venison shoulder with sugar for 2-3 days.

  2. Wipe the shoulder clean.

  3. Soak the mutton in equal parts of rape oil, vinegar, and port for 24 hours.

  4. Cut the venison into pieces and layer with fat in a dish.

  5. Add salt, pepper, and butter at the bottom of the dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 3-4 hours until tender.

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

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

  2. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + port winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison shoulder
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw moisture and flavour into the meat during curing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat while it soaks.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the soaking liquid.
Mutton
Adds richness and flavour, softened by soaking in the acidic marinade.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until tender. Low, steady heat lets tough connective tissue in the venison and mutton break down slowly into tender meat. Too high a heat toughens the muscle fibres and dries the meat before that happens.

“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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