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Venison Pasty

A savory pastry filled with stewed venison, port wine, and herbs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Venison Pasty

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the venison

  1. Rub the venison shoulder with sugar for 2-3 days, then clean it.

  2. Cut the venison into pieces and place in a stewpan with port wine, shallots, onion, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, and a little gravy.

  3. Cover and stew gently until tender, then remove the meat and bones.

  4. Reduce the gravy, let it cool, and remove the fat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the sides of a dish with pastry, leaving the bottom unlined.

  2. Layer the meat in the dish, adding fat between pieces, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of gravy and add butter pieces on top.

  4. Cover with pastry and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 2 hours.

  5. After baking, use a funnel to pour the remaining hot gravy into the pasty and shake to mix.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 pasty and becomes tender during slow stewing.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the braising gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat as it bakes.
Puff pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the meat and gravy during baking.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Slow, low-heat stewing breaks down connective tissue in tough cuts like venison shoulder. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat and can leave it stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, port wine, shallot, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, port wine, shallot, parsley, thyme, 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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