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Pickled Hare

A hare preserved in a vinegar pickle, then cooked and served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pickled Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Remove the skin from the shoulders and legs of the hare.

  2. Stuff the hare with lard.

Make and soak in the pickle

  1. In a bowl, mix vinegar, salt, pepper, water, onion, parsley, thyme, and bay leaves to create the pickle.

  2. Heat the pickle until lukewarm.

  3. Soak the hare in the pickle for at least six hours.

Cook and serve

  1. After soaking, place the hare on a spit and cook as desired.

  2. For the sauce, add some of the pickle to the cooking juices.

  3. Pass the sauce through a sieve and serve in a sauceboat.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
The main meat, which the acidic pickle slowly flavours and softens during soaking.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that flavours the meat and helps tenderise it during the soak.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the lean hare moist and flavourful as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the pickle that carries into the meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Soaking the hare in the pickle for at least six hours. The acid and aromatics in the pickle penetrate the meat slowly, so a shorter soak leaves the flavour and tenderising effect uneven and shallow.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, parsley, thyme):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, parsley, thyme. 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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