We have a fair bit of venison that found its way into our freezer after hunting season (big thanks to my in-laws) and I thought I would try a period recipe using it. I was looking for a recipe that was pretty simple and moved a bit away from the highly spiced flavours of the holidays. One problem I thought was that “Christmas flavours” - cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and the like - are a huge part of the ingredients that were used in medieval high table cooking and survive in early modern recipes. However, that part was a lot easier than I imagined. A relatively ubiquitous offering in cookery from 1600-1800 was a basic venison pasty.
A pasty today is a smaller (hand-held) pastry crust usually filled with meats and vegetables. It has been especially associated with Cornwall and its miners since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Venison pasties from the period I am interested in are much bigger. To give you an idea, most recipes I found called for between a half peck and a peck of flour. Again, measurements often shifted over time but a peck was a couple gallons.
I based my attempt on a number of recipes but, in the end, it really combines two. One from the seventeenth century comes from our friend Hannah Woolley and The Queen-Like Closet (1670); I also used one from 1732 found in The Compleat City and Country Cook: or, Accomplish'd Housewife by one Charles Carter. I will give my recipe and critique of it today then write a bit about the period recipes and some historical background in the next couple days.
What is becoming my usual caveats:
My instruction will include some things I should have done rather than what I did. Watch for the notes and please excuse my lack of pastry skills.
This is big again, even though I reduced it considerably – about a quarter of the original recipes. You may have a fair bit of extra pastry depending on how much venison you have.
Venison Pasty Recipe
Ingredients
- Approx. 800g of venison round roast or similar (You could use more venison which would use up more of your pastry)
- 1 litre /625g /about 4 cups of flour (I used the volume measurement - litre - to try and convert the period “peck”)
- 454g or 1 lbs. of butter plus 50g for the top of your meat.
- 2 eggs, beaten
- Warm water to make a dough
- 115g or ¼ lbs. of suet
- 2 Tbsp (30 ml) of red wine vinegar combined with 4 Tbsp of water
- Sea salt
- Fresh coarse ground pepper
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 400°F.
Pound out your venison roast as flat, even and rectangular as you can. One recipe I saw said to use your rolling pin; a meat tenderizer would also, obviously, work. Season the fleshy, rougher side liberally with salt and course ground pepper. Set aside.
In a large bowl, break 454g of butter with your fingers into your flour until the mixture reaches a course bread crumb consistency.
Mix in your beaten eggs.
Working a very little at a time, add water just until you get the dough to come together. Stir with a fork and then with your hands. As one of my recipes says: “do not mould it too much.”
On a big well-floured surface and using your pounded-out venison as a rough guide, roll out about ¾ of your pastry to twice the size of your meat, with a generous extra amount on all sides for a crust. You are going to try to seal liquid in, so be careful with your rolling. See Notes.
Lay your suet across the bottom half of your rolled-out pastry, where you are going to place your meat. See Notes.
Put the venison, fleshy, seasoned side down, on top of the suet in the bottom half of the pastry. You should have another half uncovered, waiting to be folded over.
Cut 4 or 5 longs slits in the top of the venison and rub more salt and pepper into these.
Scatter your additional 50g of butter over the venison.
Take about half of your reserved pastry, roll it with your hand into a long rope-like shape. It needs to be long enough to form a little wall around your venison. It is there, I presume, to keep liquid in and near the meat, so press it into the pastry bottom you have placed it on. See Notes.
Fold over the top half of the pastry, covering the venison completely. With your fingers, crimp and tightly seal the open three edges.
Roll out the pastry you have left and make what decorations you can. Mine were leaves and a tree, if that is not clear. Hannah Wolley says “you must trim it up with several Fancies made in the same Paste.”
Cut a small vent out of the top middle of your pastry.
Carefully slide your pasty off your floured rolling surface to a rimmed baking sheet. You might want an extra set of hands for this.
Pour your water and vinegar mixture into the vent you have made in your pastry. You may need to let it seep in but work as quickly as you can.
Place pasty on sheet in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes. See Notes.
Reduce your oven temperature to 300°F. Bake for about 1 hour more or until your venison reaches your desired internal temperature, checking through the vent. 145°F will leave it medium rare. See Notes.
Allow to rest at least 15 minutes and serve.
Thoughts
There were parts of this I really enjoyed. The pastry was very short and when the juices soaked into it, it is really, really good. The meat was nice, though I overcooked mine as I will explain in the Notes. There is a lot of extra fat, the venison needs it though maybe not that much. But overall, a really nice simple dish coming from that era.
Notes
I made my pastry a little wet and so had trouble with sticking when I was rolling it out. Therefore, I had a number of problems with holes and leakage. Avoid this.
I could not find suet in time for this recipe, so I used lard. Carter said to use suet cut into long slices, but Woolley called for more butter in the same place.
The step of making a rope pastry wall around your venison is one I might be getting wrong. There is something like this going on in almost all the recipes I read but I am not sure I am interpreting them right. One talks about rolling pastry thin to “compass about” your meat. Carter says to “set a Pudding crust round the inside of the pasty.” This is what I came up with and it makes sense to try and keep the liquid close to your meat.
I think my biggest mistakes came in the baking. Many of the period recipes talk about cooking your pasty for 4 or 5 hours and I did want to go low and slow for the venison. Therefore, I started mine at 300°F. However, checking a half hour in, the fat that was throughout the pasty was rendering out before my crust was at all cooked and sealing anything in. I then turned it up to 400°F for 30 minutes to try and get a cook on the pastry that would help. As per the recipe, I would recommend doing this at the beginning.
These recipes are also for much bigger pasties and were often about preserving the meat rather than making the crust super edible. I did not really take that into account and I ended up cooking mine for about 2 and a half hours. Even though most of that was at 300°F, it was too long. The meat was okay but dried out a bit, even with all the extra fat around it.
I had enough pastry left over to make the bottom of a regular modern sweet pie, in addition to my “fancies.” I used Carter’s pastry recipe which I reduced to ¼ of his measurements. It was nice and short and it would be tough to ¾ that again. So, plan on having extra or use a bigger venison roast. My meat was from a doe, so there are certainly bigger cuts out there.
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