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Venison Pasty

A pastry filled with cooked venison, seasoned with pepper, salt, nutmeg, sweet herbs, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Venison Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the venison

  1. Cut the raw venison from the bones and set aside the bones, skin, fat, and scraps for gravy.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the bones, shallot, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and sweet herbs with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Cut the better pieces of venison into 1‑inch squares and cook in another saucepan until three‑quarters done.

Assemble the pasty

  1. Line a deep dish with puff pastry and add the squares of venison.

  2. Season the venison with pepper, salt, and butter.

  3. Add ½ cup of the cooking liquid to the dish to prevent burning.

  4. Cover the filling with a lid of puff pastry about 1‑inch thick.

  5. Cut a round hole in the center of the pastry to allow steam to escape.

Bake

  1. Bake steadily 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. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  5. Venison + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw venison
Forms the meat filling, which turns tender and juicy when cooked gently in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the seasoned meat filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp, golden crust that encloses the filling.
Cooking liquid from the meat
Keeps the filling moist and helps prevent it from scorching in the dish.

The step that matters

Cut the steam hole in the lid. Without a vent, steam from the hot filling builds pressure under the pastry, which can make the crust soggy or lift it unevenly. The hole lets steam escape so the pastry bakes crisp.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, shallot, pepper, butter, meat. 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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