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Hare En Daube

A stew of hare with bacon, parsley, spices, onions, calf's feet, broth, and white wine, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hare En Daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Divide the cleaned hare in half.

  2. Layer the bottom of a stew pan with bacon slices.

  3. Place hare slices on top of the bacon.

  4. Tie the parsley bundle with thyme, bay leaves, sweet hazel, clove, and mixed spices.

Stew

  1. Add the parsley bundle, onions, calf's feet, and additional bacon to the pan.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and add the broth and white wine.

  3. Cover with buttered paper to keep the hare moist.

  4. Seal the pan and stew gently for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat, drain the hare, and skim the liquid.

  2. Serve cold or hot, garnished as desired.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Is the main meat, becoming tender and moist through long, gentle stewing.
Bacon
Lines the pan and renders fat that flavours the hare and the stewing liquid.
Calf's feet
Release gelatin into the liquid, giving the sauce body and a silky texture when cooled.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, helping to tenderise the meat during the long stew.
White onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Seal the pan and stew gently for 3 hours. A tight seal and a gentle simmer keep moisture in and the liquid from reducing or boiling hard. Boiling would toughen the meat fibres, while slow heat lets collagen break down into tender, moist meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, thyme, clove, white wine):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, thyme, clove, white 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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