Skip to main content
Main

Potted Hare

A hare cooked with butter, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, then cooled, boned, ground, and packed with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Hang the hare for four to five days.

  2. Clean the inside of the hare well.

  3. Wipe the hare dry with cloths.

  4. Cut the hare into pieces.

Bake

  1. Place the pieces in a pot with butter and spices tied in a muslin bag.

  2. Add just enough water to cover the hare.

  3. Bake until the hare is tender.

  4. Remove the hare from the pot.

  5. Let the hare cool.

Pot and store

  1. Remove all bones, sinews, and skin from the hare.

  2. Pound the meat finely in a mortar, adding the spices and butter from baking.

  3. Once the mixture is cold and solid, pack it into pots.

  4. Pour clarified butter over the top of the packed mixture.

  5. Cover the pots with paper.

  6. Store the pots in a dry, cool room.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Forms the lean, tender meat that is pounded into the spread.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and sets firm when cold to seal the potted meat.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that complements the meat and butter.

The step that matters

Pound the meat finely. Fine pounding breaks the cooked meat into a smooth, spreadable texture and lets the spices and butter blend evenly through it. Coarse pieces leave the potted mixture grainy and uneven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, pepper. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes