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Roast Hares or Rabbits

A stuffed hare or rabbit roasted with liver, pork fat, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Hares or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the chopped liver, fat pork, bread crumbs, optional mushrooms, pepper, salt, and onion juice.

  2. Stuff the hare or rabbit with the mixture and sew it up.

  3. Anoint the stuffed hare or rabbit with salad oil and lemon juice, and marinate for 1 hour.

Roast

  1. Place the hare or rabbit in a roasting pan and add the stock or butter and water underneath.

  2. Cover and roast for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the bacon.

  4. Baste with butter.

  5. Brown the meat.

  6. Keep the hare or rabbit warm.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  2. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  3. Add catsup.

  4. Add claret.

  5. Serve some gravy over the hare or rabbit and the rest in a separate dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare or rabbit
Forms the main meat that is roasted until tender and browned.
Liver
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices in the stuffing, helping it hold together and stay moist.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist and flavorful during roasting.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the finished gravy.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Browning builds colour and roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction, which needs dry surface heat. Too little heat or too much moisture leaves the meat pale and bland.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, pork, bread, mushroom, pepper, onion):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, pork, bread, mushroom, pepper, onion. 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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