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Venison Pasty

A savory pastry filled with stewed venison and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

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 meat

  1. Remove the bone and skin from the venison.

  2. Place trimming bits in a stew-pan with onions, eschalots, salt, pepper, mace, and port wine. Put a plate over the mixture.

  3. Add the venison cut into 2-inch squares.

  4. Add enough veal broth to cover the meat.

  5. Simmer over low heat until the meat is three-quarters cooked.

  6. Transfer the meat and some gravy to a dish. Let it cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare the pastry as directed.

  2. Fill the pastry with the meat and gravy.

  3. Seal the pastry well.

  4. Cover with buttered paper.

  5. Bake for 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Simmer the remaining gravy until reduced and rich.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  4. Add pepper, salt, lemon juice, and port wine.

  5. Make a hole in the top of the pasty. Pour the sauce into the hole 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mace + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together695 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Venison + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering and baking.
Onions
Break down during simmering to add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Veal broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the meat and forms the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat and pastry.
Butter
Adds richness to the thickened gravy and helps brown the pastry top.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the gravy as it reduces.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat to three-quarters cooked. Stopping before the meat is fully cooked matters because it finishes cooking in the oven; cooking it fully first leaves it dry and stringy after baking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, onion, pepper, port wine, veal, meat, flour. 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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