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Roast Hares or Rabbits

A stuffed hare or rabbit roasted with liver, pork fat, bread crumbs, mushrooms, 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.

  3. Sew it up.

  4. Anoint the stuffed animal with salad oil and lemon juice.

  5. Marinate for 1 hour.

  6. Place in a roasting pan.

  7. Add the stock or butter and water underneath, then cover.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the cover.

  3. Discard the bacon.

  4. Baste with butter and brown the meat.

  5. 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 and claret.

  4. Serve some gravy over the hare or rabbit.

  5. Serve 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 lean meat that the stuffing and basting enrich and keep moist.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean stuffed meat juicy and flavourful as it roasts.
Bread crumbs
Absorb meat juices so the stuffing stays moist and holds its shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and gently tenderises the outer surface.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, helping the surface brown and stay moist.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the meat after removing the cover. Lean game meat dries out easily. Basting with butter keeps the surface moist while the exposed skin browns through the Maillard reaction, which builds colour and savoury flavour.

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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