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Stewed Hare

A stew of hare pieces browned with butter, onions, wine, broth, herbs, and blood, cooked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the fat pieces and cook until browned.

  3. Add the small onions and cook until golden.

  4. Remove the onions.

  5. Add the hare pieces and brown them.

Stew

  1. Pour in the wine.

  2. Pour in enough broth to cover the meat.

  3. Return the onions and fat to the pan.

  4. Add sweet herbs, coarse sea salt, pepper, bay leaf, and cloves.

  5. Cover the pan and cook for 1 to 1¼ hours until the hare is tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the hare's blood.

  2. Reduce the sauce over heat until thick.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the braising liquid, helping to tenderise the meat.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meat and onions and enriching the sauce.
Hare's blood
Thickens the sauce and gives it a rich, dark body when stirred in.
Small onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and turn golden.

The step that matters

Stir in the hare's blood. Blood added to a boiling liquid can curdle and turn grainy. Stir it in off the boil, and keep the heat low, so the sauce stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, wine, meat, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, wine, meat, pepper, 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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