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Hare, Civet of

A stew of hare fillets cooked with bacon, claret, stock, onions, herbs, mushrooms, and hare blood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hare, Civet of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Fry the hare fillets and bacon in butter for 10 minutes in a sauté pan.

  2. Stir in the flour, then add the claret and stock, and bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and wash the fillets in a glass of claret.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the fillets in a clean stewpan and pass the stock through a sieve.

  2. Add the fillets along with the onions (one with cloves), parsley, thyme, bay leaves, and shallots.

  3. Stew until tender, about 2 hours, then remove the garnish.

  4. Add the mushrooms and incorporate the hare's blood into the stock.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 through long, slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the claret and stock.
Blood of the hare
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it its rich, dark body.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavour that tenderise and season the meat.
Streaky bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that browns and enriches the base.

The step that matters

Incorporating the blood into the stock. Blood thickens sauces when added gently off the boil; if it is allowed to boil, it can curdle and turn grainy, spoiling the smooth texture of the civet.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, clove, parsley, thyme, shallot, mushroom):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, parsley, thyme, shallot, mushroom. 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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