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Hare Pie, in an Earthen Dish

A savory pie made with hare, pork, veal, and fat, baked in an earthen dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Hare Pie, in an Earthen Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Bone the fresh hare and cut it into pieces along with the pork and veal.

  3. Finely chop the lard, beef suet, leek, parsley, garlic, and thyme.

Layer and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of an earthen dish with slices of fat meat.

  2. Layer the chopped meats over the fat meat and season with salt, pepper, and cloves.

  3. Add 1-2 bay leaves and cover with more chopped meat and fat.

  4. Pour the brandy over the mixture.

  5. Seal the dish with a lid using paste and cook for 4 hours in the oven.

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. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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 flavour and body of the pie filling.
Pork
Adds fat and juiciness so the filling stays moist during the long cook.
Veal
Contributes tender meat that softens into the filling during slow cooking.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and rich as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that melts into the filling, enriching texture and moisture.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavour to the meat mixture as it cooks.

The step that matters

Sealing the dish with paste. A tight seal traps steam and juices inside the dish, so the meat cooks gently in its own moisture. A gap lets liquid and aroma escape and can leave the filling dry.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, veal, beef, leek, parsley, garlic, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, beef, leek, parsley, garlic, 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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