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Roast Hare or Rabbit

Roast hare or rabbit, basted with butter, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Hare or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the hare or rabbit, wash it well in cold water, and rinse thoroughly in lukewarm water.

  2. If musty, rub the insides with vinegar, then wash again in lukewarm water to remove the acid.

  3. Wipe the animal with a soft cloth, stuff it as usual, sew it up, truss it, and roast for 30 to 45 minutes until browned.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste constantly with butter and dredge with flour just before removing from the oven.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. To make gravy, pour nearly all the fat from the roasting pan, leaving the browned drippings.

  2. Place the pan over heat, stir in 1 tablespoon of flour, and cook until browned.

  3. Gradually stir in 1 pint of boiling water, season with salt and pepper, and let it boil briefly.

  4. Serve the hot gravy in a tureen alongside the hot hare or rabbit and currant jelly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 or rabbit
Is the main meat that is roasted whole, becoming tender and savoury.
Butter
Basting fat that adds moisture and helps the outside brown in the oven.
Flour
Dredged over the surface before roasting to help form a browned crust, and thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the drippings until browned. Cooking flour in the hot fat until it browns removes raw starch taste and builds colour and flavour. Adding the boiling water only after this lets the mixture thicken smoothly without lumps.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, butter, flour, pepper. 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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