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Venison Pasty

A slow-cooked venison dish with mutton fat, oil, vinegar, port wine, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 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.

  2. Wipe the shoulder clean from sugar and wine before use.

Prepare the fat

  1. Soak the mutton fat in equal parts of rape oil, vinegar, and port for 24 hours.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the venison into pieces and layer with mutton fat.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 3-4 hours until tender.

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. Vinegar + port winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison shoulder
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Mutton fat
Adds richness and moisture as it bastes the lean venison during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the meat and helps build flavour during the curing rub.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the soaking liquid.
Vinegar
Acidity in the soaking liquid helps tenderise the meat and fat.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until tender. Venison is lean and tough, so it needs low, slow heat over several hours. The collagen in the connective tissue breaks down gradually, making the meat tender. Baking too hot can dry it out before it softens.

“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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