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Venison Pasty to Be Served Hot

A pastry-wrapped venison dish served hot, filled with stewed venison and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Pasty to Be Served Hot

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 the venison

  1. Stew the breast pieces of venison in mutton broth or water until well cooked.

  2. Stew the neck cutlets in the venison liquor until done, then let them cool in the liquor.

Assemble the pasty

  1. Roll out the pastry and line the edge of a deep pudding dish with it.

  2. Place the venison cutlets in the dish.

  3. Add some of the stewing gravy.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  5. Egg wash the bottom pastry.

  6. Cover with a thick layer of pastry.

  7. Trim the edges.

  8. Egg wash the top pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for a little over an hour.

  2. Reduce the remaining gravy with ½ bottle of port wine. Mix in a pinch of cayenne pepper.

  3. Pour the gravy into the pasty just before serving.

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. Venison + muttontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  3. Venison + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + port winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 slow stewing in liquid.
Puff pastry or short pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Egg
Egg wash gives the pastry a glossy, golden browned surface.
Port wine
Reduced into the gravy, it adds sweetness and depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Egg wash the pastry before baking. An even egg wash coats the pastry so it browns evenly and glossily; uneven coverage leaves pale patches and a dull finish.

“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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