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Hare Cakes

Hare cakes are fried patties made from minced hare, suet, egg, milk, and flour, served with gravy and toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hare Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine minced hare and suet in a bowl.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne to taste.

  3. Bind the mixture with beaten egg and milk.

  4. Form the mixture into small cakes and dust with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cakes in hot dripping or lard for 5-6 minutes until golden.

  2. Serve on a hot dish with gravy and garnish with toasted sippets.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the cakes moist and rich-tasting as they cook.
Egg
Binds the minced hare together so the cakes hold their shape.
Milk
Loosens the binding so the mixture is soft enough to form into cakes.
Hot dripping or lard
Conducts heat to brown the outside of the cakes and add savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Bind the mixture with beaten egg and milk. Too little binding leaves the minced hare crumbly, so the cakes may break apart in the pan. Adding the liquid gradually keeps the mixture workable and cohesive.

“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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