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Hare, Baked

A baked hare dish with bacon, bread crumbs, mushrooms, broth, and optional mashed potatoes or ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hare, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cold hare and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Dice the bacon and fry it in butter until slightly browned.

  3. Place the bacon at the bottom of a deep pie dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Sprinkle a handful of bread crumbs over the bacon.

  2. Season the hare pieces with pepper and salt, then place them on top of the bread crumbs.

  3. Cut the mushrooms in half, partially stew them, and lay them on the hare.

  4. Add another layer of bread crumbs on top of the mushrooms.

  5. Dot the surface with small pieces of butter and add enough broth to keep it moist.

  6. Place the dish in a tin filled with water and bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

  7. If mushrooms are unavailable, use mashed potatoes and add a little ketchup to the broth.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold hare
Provides the main meat, which is cooked through and becomes tender in the bake.
Fat bacon
Melts into the dish, adding fat and savory flavor as it browns.
Button mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the layers.
Bread crumbs
Form layers that soak up juices and help hold the filling together.
Broth
Adds moisture so the dish does not dry out while baking.

The step that matters

Adding enough broth. Cold cooked meat has little moisture left, so enough broth keeps the layers from drying out in the oven. Too little leaves the dish dry, too much can make it soggy.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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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