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Venison, Potted

Venison cooked with port wine, butter, and a flour paste, baked, pounded, and stored.

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, Potted

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Slice the venison and place it in a buttered baking dish.

  3. Pour the port wine over the venison and add the butter on top.

  4. Cover the dish with a paste made from flour and water.

Bake and pot

  1. Bake for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the paste and pound the meat with the butter and seasonings.

  3. Transfer the mixture into pots.

  4. Return the pots to the oven for 15 minutes.

  5. Pour clarified butter over the top and store in a dry place.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Port wine + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together695 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 potted meat, becoming tender during long, slow baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and later seals the top of the pots against air.
Port wine
Adds moisture and sweet, fruity flavour while it softens the meat as it bakes.
Flour
Makes a sealed paste cover that traps steam and moisture around the meat.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat with butter and seasonings. Pounding breaks the cooked meat into fine fibres so it blends smoothly with the butter. Meat that is under-pounded stays stringy and the potted texture will be uneven.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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