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Collared Hare

A hare stuffed with bacon, spices, and bread, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Collared Hare

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 hare

  1. Hang the hare until it begins to turn.

  2. Remove the head and neck.

  3. Empty the inside of the hare, wipe it clean, and dry it.

  4. Remove all bones.

  5. Shape the hare neatly for a collar.

  6. Lard the hare with strips of bacon.

Make the paste

  1. Mix the grated bread, mace, cloves, white pepper, salt, egg yolks, and chopped herbs to make a paste.

  2. Rub the paste on both sides of the hare.

  3. Lay the remainder of the paste on the inner surface.

Roll and bake

  1. Roll up the hare tightly.

  2. Bind the roll well.

  3. Place the hare in a deep jar.

  4. Cover the hare with butter.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until tender.

  6. Remove the hare from the oven.

  7. Let it cool.

  8. Add more butter to cover if needed.

  9. Tie it over with bladder.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main body of the collar, providing the meat that becomes tender during slow baking.
Eggs
Egg yolks bind the bread and spice paste together so it holds on the meat.
Stale white bread
Soaks up moisture and helps the paste stick and hold its shape around the meat.
Sweet fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the lean hare moist during the long, slow bake.
Butter
Covers the hare to add richness and help keep the surface from drying out.

The step that matters

Rolling and binding the hare tightly. A loose roll lets the paste and juices escape and leaves gaps, so the collar may cook unevenly and lose its shape when sliced.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, mace, clove, egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, mace, clove, egg, 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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