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Civet of Hare

A slow-cooked hare stew with bacon, red wine, herbs, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Civet of Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the hare

  1. Toss hare pieces in butter with bacon in a pot until slightly colored.

  2. Add flour and red wine, then season with pepper, spices, herbs, bay leaf, clove, and onion.

Simmer

  1. Simmer slowly by the fire for 5 hours or in a jar in the oven.

Prepare the onions

  1. Toss small onions in butter in a separate pan until slightly brown, then moisten with stock and add sugar. Cook slowly.

Finish and serve

  1. When the hare is nearly cooked, remove the herbs and onion, add mushrooms, and season with salt if needed.

  2. Finish cooking the hare, then serve with the sauce, small onions, mushrooms, and fried sippets.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 during the long, slow simmer.
Flour
Thickens the red wine and cooking juices into a sauce.
Red wine
Forms the main liquid, adding acidity and depth to the sauce.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour when browned with the hare in butter.
Butter
Browns the hare and small onions, adding richness and flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Slow simmer of the hare. Hare is lean and tough, so it needs long, gentle simmering with no rapid boiling. Vigorous heat toughens the meat and can reduce the sauce too quickly, while slow cooking breaks down connective tissue into tender meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, red wine, pepper, clove, sugar, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, red wine, pepper, clove, sugar, mushroom. 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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