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Wild Pastete — Venison Pasty

Venison steaks marinated in vinegar and spices, steamed until tender, then baked in a pastry with forcemeat balls and served with truffle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Wild Pastete — Venison Pasty

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Marinate

  1. Beat the venison with a rolling pin or cutlet bat.

  2. Rub it with sliced shallots and minced garlic.

  3. Sprinkle with salt, black pepper, pounded cloves, and sugar.

  4. Place in a dish, pour vinegar over, and add juniper berries or bay leaves.

  5. Marinate for 4-5 days, turning and basting daily.

Cook the meat

  1. Heat butter in a large stew pan, add the meat (cut into pieces if large), and cover.

  2. Steam the meat in its own gravy, adding marinade and a little water as needed.

  3. Once tender, cut the meat into thick steaks and let cool.

  4. Stew the bones longer to make gravy for truffle sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pack the meat pieces in a pasty with seasoned forcemeat balls.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) and pour in truffle sauce 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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
The main meat, which the marinade and slow steaming make tender.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps soften the tough meat fibres.
Shallots
Add savoury aromatic flavour that penetrates the meat during marinating.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that infuses the meat during marinating.
Butter
Fat for starting the browning and enriching the meat's flavour.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the acidity and savouriness.

The step that matters

Steaming the meat until tender. Venison is lean and can toughen if cooked too hard or too fast. Gentle covered steaming in its own juices breaks down connective tissue slowly, so the meat stays moist and tender.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, shallot, garlic, pepper, sugar, vinegar, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, shallot, garlic, pepper, sugar, vinegar, 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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