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Venison Pasty

A savory pastry filled with venison, port wine, shallots, onion, herbs, and gravy, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Venison Pasty

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Rub the venison shoulder with sugar and let it sit for 2–3 days.

  2. Cut the venison into pieces and place them in a pot with port wine, shallots, onion, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, and a little gravy.

  3. Cover the pot and simmer gently until the meat is tender.

  4. Remove the meat and bones from the pot.

  5. Reduce the gravy, let it cool, and remove the fat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the sides of a dish with pastry, leaving the bottom unlined.

  2. Layer the meat in the dish, adding fat between pieces.

  3. Pour the reduced gravy and butter over the meat.

  4. Cover the dish with pastry.

  5. Bake at 300 °F (150 °C) for 2 hours.

  6. After baking, use a funnel to add hot gravy into the center of the pasty.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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 long, gentle simmering.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the braising liquid.
Shallots
Add a mild sweet aroma that builds the savoury base of the gravy.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid as it cooks down.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and body, and is reduced to a richer sauce for the pasty.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and moistness into the filling.

The step that matters

Simmering the venison gently until tender. Tough cuts like shoulder and neck contain connective tissue that breaks down slowly at low heat. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and leaves the meat dry and chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, port wine, shallot, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, port wine, shallot, parsley, thyme, pepper, 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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