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Venison Pasty

A savory venison pie filled with meat, onions, spices, and a port wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and allspice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,189 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. 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. Bone the venison and trim off all the skin. Cut it into 2-inch square pieces.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the venison pieces, port wine, sliced onions or shallots, coarse sea salt, mace, allspice, and enough veal broth to cover.

  3. Cook over low heat until three-quarters done.

Make the gravy

  1. In another saucepan, place the trimmings, cover with water, and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the venison pieces for the pasty and place them in a deep dish with a little of their cooking liquid to cool.

  3. Add the remaining cooking liquid to the bones and trimmings, and boil until the pasty is ready.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pasty with pastry made as per recipe 472, ornament it, and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 2 hours.

  2. Before serving, pour in a sauce made from the strained and skimmed gravy, adding pepper, salt, ½ cup port, lemon juice, and a little flour and butter to thicken.

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. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich during slow, gentle simmering.
Port wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness to the meat and the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so the sauce coats the pasty.
Butter
Enriches the thickened sauce, adding fat and a glossy texture.
Veal broth
Supplies moisture and savory body to the slow-cooked meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the venison until three-quarters done. Stopping at three-quarters done leaves the meat firm enough to hold its shape in the pasty. Since it finishes in the oven, overcooking now would leave it dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, port wine, onion, allspice, veal, flour, 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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