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Roast Hares or Rabbits

A stuffed hare or rabbit roasted with a liver, pork fat, bread crumbs, and optional mushrooms, served with a brown 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. Skin and clean the hare or rabbit thoroughly.

  2. Chop the liver and pork fat, then mix with bread crumbs and optional mushrooms.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and onion juice.

  4. Stuff the hare or rabbit with the mixture and sew it closed.

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

Roast

  1. Place the hare or rabbit in a roaster and pour in the stock or butter and water.

  2. Cover and cook for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the bacon, wash the hare or rabbit with butter, and brown it.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Keep the hare or rabbit hot while you thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  2. Boil the gravy, then add catsup and claret.

  3. Pour some gravy over the hare or rabbit and serve the rest in a boat.

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 body of the dish, carrying the stuffing and gravy.
Liver
Adds richness and a deeper, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Pork fat
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and carries flavour during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the juices and fat, giving the stuffing body and a moist texture.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the hare or rabbit after cooking. Washing with butter and browning at the end creates colour and flavour on the surface through the Maillard reaction. Too little heat leaves the meat pale and bland, while overcooking dries it out.

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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