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Venison Pasty

A savory venison pasty filled with seasoned steaks, rich gravy, port wine, and lemon juice, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Rub the venison steaks with sweet herbs, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Fry the steaks slightly in butter.

Assemble

  1. Line the sides and edges of a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Lay the steaks in the dish and add the rich gravy.

  3. Pour in the port wine and lemon juice (or vinegar).

  4. Cover the dish with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for nearly 2 hours.

  5. Before serving, pour a little more gravy into the pie.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main meat body and gives the pasty its rich, gamey flavour.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that lines and covers the dish, browning in the oven.
Rich gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth so the meat stays tender during the long bake.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the gravy as it cooks down.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and balances the port's sweetness.

The step that matters

Frying the steaks slightly in butter. Searing the surface browns the meat and builds savoury flavour before baking, so the steaks do not turn out grey and bland under the pastry.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, port wine, lemon. 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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