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Leveret, Roasted

A roasted young hare served with red‑currant jelly and a port wine gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Leveret, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the leveret and optionally stuff it with hare stuffing.

  2. Lard the leveret or cover it with bacon or paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the leveret before a brisk fire, basting constantly.

  2. Remove the bacon or paper a few minutes before serving.

  3. Serve hot with red-currant jelly.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken stock with butter and flour.

  2. Boil the thickened stock for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in port wine.

  4. Serve the gravy.

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. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,167 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Leveret
The main meat, cooked by roasting until tender and browned on the outside.
Butter and flour
Together they form a roux that thickens the stock into a smooth gravy.
Fat bacon or white paper
Covers the leveret to protect it from drying out during roasting.
Port wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fruity note to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Basting constantly while roasting. Frequent basting spreads melted fat and juices over the surface, keeping the lean meat moist and helping it brown evenly as the heat works through it.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, port wine. 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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