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Venison Pasty

A pastry filled with venison, onions, eschalots, and a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the bone and skin from the venison.

  2. In a stew-pan, layer trimming bits of venison, onions, eschalots, pepper, salt, mace, and port wine. Place a plate over the mixture.

  3. Add the venison cut into 2-inch pieces. Cover with veal broth.

  4. Simmer over low heat until the meat is three-quarters cooked.

  5. Transfer to a dish with some gravy and let cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare the pastry as directed.

  2. Fill the pastry with the meat and gravy. Seal the pastry tightly.

  3. Decorate as desired. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Bake for 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Meanwhile, simmer the remaining gravy until reduced and rich. Strain the gravy.

  2. Thicken with flour and butter.

  3. Add pepper, salt, lemon juice, and port wine to the gravy.

  4. Make a hole in the top of the pasty. Pour the sauce into the hole 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. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together695 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 through slow simmering in liquid.
Onions
Break down during cooking to add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity sweetness to the meat and gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat and pastry.
Veal broth
Supplies liquid that cooks the meat and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the meat to three-quarters cooked only. The meat finishes cooking in the oven, so stopping early keeps it from drying out or turning tough while it bakes inside the pastry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, onion, pepper, port wine, veal, meat, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, onion, pepper, port wine, veal, meat, 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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