Name: To Roast Hare
Ingredients: 1 hare; coarse sea salt; black pepper; vinegar; milk; butter; stuffing (liver, anchovy, fat bacon, suet, herbs, nutmeg, bread crumbs, 1 egg); currant jelly

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the skinned hare well. If it's old, lard it to make it tender, or soak it in vinegar, then wash it well afterwards.
Stuff the hare with a well-seasoned stuffing and sew it up.
Baste with milk until half cooked, then switch to butter.
Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially.
Serve with froth, rich gravy, and currant jelly sauce.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, milk, butter, liver, anchovy, bread):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Capersfits about as well
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, milk, butter, liver, anchovy, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.