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Hare, Pickled

Pickled hare prepared with vinegar, salt, pepper, onions, bay leaves, garlic, cloves, bacon, wine, stock, and a roux-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Hare, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Pickle

  1. Pickle the hare in vinegar for 4 to 6 days with salt, pepper, onions, bay leaves, garlic, and cloves.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a roux with butter and flour.

  2. Add half the pickling vinegar with clotted blood, red wine, diced bacon, stock, and the same seasoning as the pickle.

  3. Cook the sauce for 30 minutes.

Braise

  1. Add the hare, cover the pan, and simmer slowly over moderate heat for about 2 hours.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Garlic + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Main meat that becomes tender through long, slow simmering in the sauce.
Vinegar
Acidity from the pickling vinegar tenderises the meat and brightens the sauce.
Clotted blood
Thickens the sauce and adds a rich, dark flavour.
Flour
Forms a roux with butter that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to make the roux and adds richness.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the hare slowly. Gentle, covered simmering lets the tough connective tissue in the hare break down slowly, giving tender meat. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can reduce the sauce too quickly, so keep the heat moderate.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour, red wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour, red wine. 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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