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Potted Haiie

A stew of hare cooked with bacon, herbs, spices, and sherry until tender, then ground with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Haiie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin, empty, and wash the hare.

  2. Cut it down the middle and place it in a stewpan with bacon slices underneath and on top.

Stew

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and stew gently until the hare is tender and the meat separates easily from the bones.

Pound and season

  1. Remove the hare, take out the bones, and pound the meat with the bacon in a mortar until smooth.

  2. If needed, season with cayenne, salt, and pounded mace, ensuring they are well mixed.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the meat that becomes the smooth potted paste.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the pounded meat moist and rich.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the hare is tender. High heat or a rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can make the hare dry and stringy. A gentle simmer lets collagen soften slowly, so the meat becomes tender and pulls easily from the bones for pounding.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, carrot, pepper, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, carrot, pepper, sherry. 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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