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Another Venison Pasty

A baked venison pasty with a crust of flour, water, and dripping, finished with a rich puff pastry topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Venison Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Season the venison pieces with salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Place the meat in a dish and cover with thin slices of butter.

Bake and top

  1. Wet the edges of the dish and cover with a paste made from flour, water, and dripping, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

  3. Once cooled, remove the crust and cover with rich puff pastry.

  4. Bake again for nearly 1 hour.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 during the long slow bake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the meat moist as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the paste crust that encloses and protects the meat while it bakes.
Dripping
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the crust paste, improving its texture.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Baking the meat under the crust. The meat needs a long, gentle bake so connective tissue breaks down and the venison becomes tender. Removing the first crust after cooling and adding puff pastry before the second bake means the top must be handled carefully so it stays intact and bakes evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, 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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