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Mock Venison Pasty

A savory pasty filled with stewed ox‑cheek, vegetables, herbs, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and port wine work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mock Venison Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the meat

  1. Stew the ox‑cheek in good stock for 1.5 hours.

  2. Add vegetables and herbs until the meat is tender.

  3. Remove the meat from the bones and slice it.

Assemble the pasty

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Place the slices of meat in the dish.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the gravy and return it to the pan.

  2. Flavor the gravy with ketchup and port wine.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the meat and cover with pastry.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. Ketchup + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

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

  3. Ketchup + peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-cheek
Slow stewing breaks down tough connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Good stock
Provides the savoury liquid that cooks the meat and forms the base of the gravy.
Puff pastry
Bakes into crisp, flaky, golden layers that enclose the filling.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and rich, deep flavour to the gravy.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, tang and savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat is tender. The tough connective tissue in ox-cheek only softens into gelatin with long, gentle simmering. If the meat is rushed or cooked too hard, it stays chewy and dry in the finished pasty.

“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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