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Hare Collops

A dish of minced hare meat seasoned with cayenne pepper and sea salt, browned with butter and flour, simmered in gravy and port, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hare Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cold hare and mince it finely.

  2. Season the minced meat with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt 1 ounce of butter for every pound of minced meat.

  2. Dredge a little flour over the butter and minced meat, stirring until dark brown.

  3. In a saucepan, combine ½ pint of strained gravy and the collops, then add a glass of port.

  4. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Cold hare meat
Forms the main body of the dish, shaped into fine minced collops.
Butter
Carries the cooking of the meat and helps the flour brown into a rich base.
Flour
Browns in the butter and thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Strained gravy
Provides the liquid that cooks the collops and carries their flavour.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the simmering sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Stirring the flour in the butter until dark brown builds the colour and nutty flavour of the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it pale and floury-tasting, while burning it makes the sauce bitter.

“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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