Skip to main content
Main

To Pot Venison

A venison pâté made by stewing, grinding, seasoning, and covering with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pot Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Lay the venison in a dish and stick pieces of butter all over it.

  2. Cover with brown paper.

  3. Stew until cooked.

  4. Remove from the liquid and drain.

  5. Let cool, then remove the skin.

Make the pâté

  1. Beat the meat in a marble mortar until smooth.

  2. Season with mace, cloves, nutmeg, black pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Add some of the cooled butter to moisten the mixture.

  4. Pack tightly into a dish.

  5. Cover with clarified butter.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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
Forms the main body of the pâté, giving it its meaty texture once beaten smooth.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the beaten meat rich and spreadable.

The step that matters

Beat the meat in a marble mortar until smooth. Breaking the cooked meat down finely and evenly gives the pâté a smooth, spreadable texture. Fat and moisture must be worked in well, or the mixture can turn grainy or dry.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

Roast VenisonRoast Venison20 recipesVenison PastyVenison Pasty7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes