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Another Venison Pasty

A pastry filled with seasoned venison, wrapped in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Venison Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Season the venison pieces with salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Place the meat in a dish and cover with thin slices of butter.

  3. Wet the edges of the dish.

Make the crust and bake

  1. Make a paste with flour, water, and a small amount of dripping, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Cover the dish with the paste and bake for 2 hours.

  3. Once cooled, remove the crust and cover with rich puff pastry.

  4. Bake for an additional hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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
Forms the main body of the filling, becoming tender during the long slow bake.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the meat as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the paste that seals and shapes the crust over the dish.
Dripping
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the crust paste.

The step that matters

Removing the crust before adding puff pastry. The first crust is removed after cooling so the second, rich puff pastry can be added on top. Cooling first helps the meat firm up and keeps the top layer from becoming soggy or tearing as it is handled.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

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