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To Make a Venison Pasty

A savory pastry filled with seasoned venison, butter, water, and wine, baked until crust is golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and red wine work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Make a Venison Pasty

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Bone the venison and cut it into slices. Season with salt and pepper, placing the fat on top.

  2. Prepare puff pastry and line a dish with it, then cover with a thick crust.

  3. Add the butter and water to the pasty, sealing the edges well.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for two hours or longer if the pasty is large.

  2. Make gravy from the bones and a little beef, adding the red wine.

  3. Once baked, pour the hot gravy into the pasty.

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 + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 filling, providing the meat that the pasty is built around.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts during baking.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Puff pastry
Forms the crust, rising and turning flaky and golden in the oven.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges of the pasty. If the edges are not sealed well, steam and juices can escape during the long bake, drying the filling and leaving it less moist.

“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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