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Venison

Venison ground with wine, mace, pepper, salt, and butter, baked overnight, then pressed into pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and red wine work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Marinate and season

  1. Rub the venison all over with red wine.

  2. Season with beaten mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place in an earthen dish and pour over ½ cup red wine and 1 pound of butter.

  4. If using a shoulder, cover with a coarse paste and bake overnight at 300°F (150°C).

Bake and prepare the paste

  1. After baking, remove the meat from the bones and beat it in a mortar with the fat from the gravy.

  2. If not sufficiently seasoned, add more seasoning and clarified butter, beating until it forms a fine paste.

Pot and store

  1. Press the mixture into pots, pour clarified butter over it, 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 + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Red wine + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Red wine + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 pâté, giving it meaty texture and rich flavor when beaten fine.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the pâté a smooth, spreadable texture.
Red wine
Tenderizes the meat and adds acidity and depth of flavor.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor that complements the rich meat.

The step that matters

Beating to a fine paste. Beating the cooked meat thoroughly with fat breaks down fibers into a smooth, spreadable texture. Stopping early leaves a coarse, grainy pâté, so the mixture should be beaten until fine.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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