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To Pot Venison

A dish of venison cooked with wine, butter, and spices, then beaten into a paste and pressed into pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and red wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 575 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

To Pot 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

  1. Rub the venison with vinegar and let it sit for an hour.

  2. Dry it with a cloth and rub it all over with red wine.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and beaten mace.

  4. Place it in an earthen dish and pour over ½ pint of red wine and 1 pound of butter.

Cook

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

Make the paste and pot

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

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

  3. Press the mixture into pots and pour clarified butter over it.

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. Vinegar + red winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Venison + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Vinegar
Acidity helps tenderise the meat during its initial rest.
Red wine
Adds moisture and deep flavour to the meat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the finished paste a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Beating the meat into a fine paste. Meat must be beaten thoroughly with fat while warm so the fibres break down and the mixture binds into a smooth, spreadable paste rather than a coarse, crumbly one.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, vinegar, 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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