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Roasted Hare

Roasted hare with Madeira wine, egg glaze, bread crumbs, butter, served with espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roasted Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut the skin from the soaked hare and place it on a spit.

  2. Rub the hare with Madeira wine, pricking it in various places.

  3. Cover the hare entirely with a paste and roast it.

  4. Optionally, stick 2-3 cloves into the knuckles.

Glaze and brown

  1. Once done, remove the paste and quickly rub the hare with egg.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the hare and baste gently with butter.

  3. Keep turning the hare before the fire until a nice brown crust forms.

Serve

  1. Serve the hare over some espagnole sauce with boiled Madeira wine.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + clovetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Is the main protein that is roasted and carved for serving.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic flavour when rubbed on the hare and reduced for the sauce.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs so they adhere to the surface of the hare.
Bread crumbs
Form a coating that toasts to a crisp, golden-brown crust.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and richness on the crust.

The step that matters

Keep turning the hare before the fire until a nice brown crust forms.. Turning exposes all sides to even heat, so the crumb coating browns evenly without scorching in one spot. Basting with butter helps the surface brown while the interior stays moist.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (madeira wine, egg, bread, butter, sauce):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against madeira wine, egg, bread, butter, sauce. 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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