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Roast Hare

Roast hare stuffed with veal forcemeat, seasoned with sea salt, baked in milk and beef dripping, then floured.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,784 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Hang the hare for 7 to 8 days after skinning and cleaning.

  2. Stuff the hare with veal forcemeat.

  3. Sew the skin together where it was cut.

  4. Cut through the sinews of the hind legs, press them towards the head, and draw the forelegs back.

  5. Pass a skewer through the hind legs, through the body, and out through the forelegs.

  6. Press the head back and skewer through the top of the shoulder and out through the other shoulder.

Roast

  1. Prepare a pan with a little coarse sea salt and beef dripping.

  2. Baste the hare constantly with milk until it is cooked.

  3. Once dried up, flour the hare.

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. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + milktop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Hare
Provides the meat that is roasted; hanging before cooking is part of the record's method.
Veal forcemeat
Stuffed into the hare, it adds moisture and richness to the lean meat as it roasts.
Milk
Used to baste the hare, where its milk solids can brown and add colour and flavour to the surface.
Beef dripping
Fat in the pan that carries heat to the hare and helps the surface brown.
Flour
Dusted on the hare once the surface has dried, helping form a browned crust.

The step that matters

Basting with milk until cooked. Milk solids can scorch and burn on the hot surface if basting is uneven or stops early, while the lean meat can dry out if it is not kept moist; constant basting balances both.

“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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