Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Hare

Stewed hare with apple, onion, herbs, and optional butter or lard, baked in a paper bag.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,207 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Stewed Hare

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the hare pieces in a dish and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the apple and bacon or ham if desired.

  4. In a bowl, mix the onion, sweet herbs, flour, and water, stock, or wine.

Bake

  1. Combine this mixture with the hare and place everything in a paper bag.

  2. Lay the bag on the grid in the oven and cook for 45 minutes.

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. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender with slow, moist cooking.
Onion
Softens and adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking juices.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce around the meat.
Water, stock, or wine
Supplies the moisture that steams the hare inside the bag.
Apple
Softens during cooking, adding mild sweetness and body to the juices.
Butter or lard
Adds richness and fat, which carries flavour and helps browning.

The step that matters

Sealing the hare in the paper bag. The enclosed bag traps steam around the meat, so it braises gently and stays moist. Leaks let moisture escape, which can dry the hare and thin the flour-thickened sauce.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, onion, flour, wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, onion, flour, wine. 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.

You might also like

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes