Name: Roast Hare
Ingredients: 1 young hare; forcemeat; ½ cup milk; butter; pepper; ginger

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Choose a young hare with smooth claws and a narrow cleft in the lip.
Hang the hare for several days to improve flavor; if emptied, wipe inside daily and sprinkle with pepper and ginger.
Skin the hare and soak it in warm water for 1 hour to draw out blood; if old, soak in vinegar briefly and rinse well.
Wipe the hare dry, fill the belly with forcemeat, and sew it up.
Bring the hind and fore legs close to the body and skewer them; fix the head between the shoulders with another skewer, leaving the ears on.
Tie a string around the body from skewer to skewer above the back.
Keep the hare at a distance from the fire while roasting to prevent the outside from drying out.
Baste the hare with milk for a short time, then with butter, ensuring the meat stays juicy.
When almost done, flour the hare and baste well with butter.
Once nicely browned, remove the skewers and serve with a little gravy and red-currant jelly.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,519 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26,984 recipes

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