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Roast Hare or Rabbit

A roasted hare or rabbit stuffed with breadcrumbs, pork fat, marjoram, onion, and spices, served with a currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Hare or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the hare

  1. Stuff the hare with a mixture of bread crumbs, fat pork, marjoram, onion, pepper, and salt, moistened with hot water.

  2. Sew up the hare with fine cotton and tie the legs closely to the body.

Roast

  1. Place the hare in a roasting pan, back side up, and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Cover with another pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes, basting with butter and water occasionally.

  3. Uncover, baste with gravy until browned, dredge with flour, and add butter until frothy.

  4. Transfer the hare to a hot dish and keep covered while making the gravy.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain and skim the pan drippings, season, thicken with browned flour, and stir in currant jelly and parsley.

  2. Boil the gravy, pour some over the hare, and serve the rest in a gravy boat.

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. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hare or rabbit
Is the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during the long roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot water and fat in the stuffing, keeping it moist inside the hare.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist and adds savory flavor.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the stuffing as it cooks inside the hare.
Flour
Browns in the pan drippings and thickens the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity to the gravy.

The step that matters

Uncover, baste with gravy until browned, dredge with flour, and add butter until frothy.. Basting with fat and dredging with flour after uncovering lets the surface brown through the Maillard reaction. Covering first keeps the meat moist, so browning must wait until near the end.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, bread, pork, marjoram, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, bread, pork, marjoram, pepper, 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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