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Venison Pie or Pastry

A savory pie made with venison, gravy, and pastry, finished with butter and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Venison Pie or Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the venison into pieces, combining fat and lean meat.

  2. Place bones and trimmings in a pot with salt, pepper, and enough water or veal broth to cover.

  3. Simmer until a good gravy forms, then strain it.

  4. Prepare a rich pastry dough and roll it out thick.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a deep dish with the pastry, then add the seasoned meat.

  2. Pour the prepared gravy and a glass of port wine over the meat.

  3. Dot the top with bits of butter rolled in flour.

  4. Cover with a thick lid of pastry and decorate with leaves and flowers using a cutter.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 2 or more hours, depending on size.

  2. Before finishing, brush the top with beaten egg and return to the oven to 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Venison + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, with fat and lean pieces keeping the filling moist and flavorful.
Flour
Thickens the butter and helps build structure in the pastry.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pastry tender and the top flavorful.
Egg
Brushed on top, it gives the crust a glossy, browned finish.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the gravy and meat.
Pastry dough
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Simmering the gravy until good and strained. Simmering bones and trimmings slowly extracts gelatin and flavor, which gives the gravy body. Straining removes solids so the gravy stays smooth and the filling does not turn greasy or grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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