Skip to main content
Main

Hare, Puree of

A smooth puree made from roasted hare, ham, onions, mace, stock, claret, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Hare, Puree of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut up the remains of a roasted hare.

  2. In a stewpan, add the ham, hare, onions, mace, stock, and bouquet garni.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours or more.

  4. Strain the mixture and pull all the meat from the bones.

Make the puree

  1. Pound the meat with some of the boiled ham and the soaked crusts.

  2. Rub the mixture through a tamis and mix with the claret and enough stock to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  3. Heat in a double boiler and work in a little butter before serving with 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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  3. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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 and flavour that gives the puree its body.
French rolls
Their soaked crust thickens the puree and gives it a smooth, bound texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish when worked in at the end.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour, thinning the puree to a cream-like consistency.
Stock
Supplies liquid that extracts flavour and sets the final cream-like consistency.

The step that matters

Heating in a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat keeps the puree from scorching or splitting, and adding butter off direct heat keeps it smooth and glossy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes