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Hare Pie

A savory pie made with hare, pepper, salt, butter, water, puff pastry, gravy, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and red wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,599 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Season the hare pieces with pepper and salt.

  3. Prepare stuffing as for roasting and place it in the middle of a baking dish.

  4. Arrange the hare pieces around the stuffing.

  5. Dot the hare with bits of butter.

  6. Fill the dish with water.

Cover and bake

  1. Cover the dish with puff pastry and seal it well.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours.

  3. Pour hot gravy and red wine into the dish before serving.

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. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 during the long, covered baking.
Puff pastry
Forms a sealed top that traps steam and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the meat and helps the surface brown.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Seal the pastry well. A tight seal keeps steam inside the dish, so the hare cooks gently in its own moisture and the pastry rises and browns rather than drying out.

“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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