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To Stew a Hare

A stew made from hare, onions, butter, suet, spices, and wine, thickened with flour and served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Stew a Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Clean and cut the hare into small pieces.

  2. Season the meat with grated nutmeg, beaten mace, and salt.

  3. Place the meat in a jug with onions, butter, and water.

  4. Cover with beef suet and seal tightly.

Boil and strain

  1. Boil in a kettle of water for 3 hours for a young hare or 4 hours for an old one.

  2. Add water as needed.

  3. Remove the suet and strain the gravy, discarding the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stew pan, combine the hare with the gravy, lemon peel, and cayenne.

  2. Add walnut ketchup, lemon pickle, ale, red wine, lemon juice, and salt to taste.

  3. Thicken with a flour and water mixture as needed.

  4. Stir in melted butter and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Remove the onions and serve garnished with currant jelly and lemon.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 stew, becoming tender through long, gentle cooking.
Beef suet
Covers the jug to seal in moisture and flavour during the long boil.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.
Flour and water mixture
Thickens the gravy to give it body and a smooth coating texture.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a glossy fat to the finished sauce.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes a dark, savoury, umami-rich flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken with a flour and water mixture as needed. Flour must be stirred into liquid smoothly and added gradually while simmering. Starch swells as it heats, so adding too much at once creates lumps or an overly thick gravy, and undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, beef, nutmeg, walnut, ketchup, lemon):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, beef, nutmeg, walnut, ketchup, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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