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Sauce

Sauce Au Civet, for Hares or Rabbits

A sauce made with hare or rabbit liver, suet, stock, onions, bay leaves, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,420 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Sauce Au Civet, for Hares or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine the liver, suet, stock, onions, bay leaves, and red wine.

  2. Let the sauce simmer until fully cooked.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

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. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Onion + red winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Liver + red winetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Breaks down during simmering to thicken and enrich the sauce with a deep, savoury flavour.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a rounder mouthfeel.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, helping to balance the rich liver flavour.
Onions
Break down into sweetness and body, building the base flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering until fully cooked. Liver must cook through to be safe and to lose its raw texture, but overheating or boiling too hard can make it grainy and tough. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly while keeping the sauce smooth once strained.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, red wine):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, red wine. 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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