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A Cold Hare or Rabbit Pee

A cold pie made from hare or rabbit, bacon, livers, bay leaves, and sweet basil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and liver work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 233 recipes. Both carry geraniol, which smells rose, geranium. The science ↓

A Cold Hare or Rabbit Pee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Bone the hare or rabbit without cutting it into pieces.

  2. If not boning, flatten and break all bones.

  3. Lard the meat with thin strips of bacon and let it pickle for 2 hours.

  4. Drain the meat.

Assemble the pie

  1. Pound the livers with some bacon.

  2. Place the pounded livers in the bottom of a pie dish.

  3. Season the meat on both sides.

  4. Place the meat over the livers.

  5. Add bay leaves, sweet basil, and slices of bacon on top.

  6. Cover the pie with a lid.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 2 to 3 hours, depending on the age of the meat.

  2. Once done and cooled, serve the pie.

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. Rabbit + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  2. Liver + basiltop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Rabbit + basiltop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare or rabbit
Provides the main lean meat, which becomes tender with long, slow cooking.
Bacon
Lardons add fat and moisture, keeping the lean game meat from drying out.
Livers
Pounded into the base, they add rich flavor and a smooth, dense texture.
Bay leaves
Contribute a subtle herbal aroma to the meat and juices during baking.
Sweet basil
Adds a fresh, aromatic herbal note that complements the rich meat.

The step that matters

Baking time. Hare and rabbit are lean, and their connective tissue needs long, slow heat to soften. Older animals have tougher tissue, so the longer end of the time may be needed.

Swap the basil

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver. 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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