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Hare Pepper

A hare stew flavored with peppercorns, lemon rind, and cloves, finished with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Hare Pepper

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the hare and onion

  1. Fry the hare joints in hot butter until browned.

  2. Add the sliced onion and diced bacon, cooking until the onion is soft.

  3. Remove the hare, onion, and bacon from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same pan, brown the flour in the remaining butter.

  2. Gradually add the water or stock, stirring until smooth.

  3. Return the hare, peppercorns, lemon rind, cloves, and gravy to the pan.

  4. Simmer gently for at least 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Transfer the hare to a serving dish and strain the gravy over it.

  2. Garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 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

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering.
Butter
Carries browning in the pan and gives the hare and flour a rich flavour.
Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the water or stock into a smooth gravy.
Bacon
Its fat and smoky savour season the onion and the dish as it cooks.
Onion
Softened in the pan, it adds sweetness and depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the stock. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour dispersed so the gravy becomes smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, clove. 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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