Name: Liver Sauce for Roast Hare or Rabbit
Ingredients: 1 liver (hare or rabbit); 1 clove of shallot; a few herbs; 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice; 1 glass white wine (for rabbit) or port wine (for hare); ½ glass currant jelly (optional); salt; pepper

Why it works: Clove and pepper 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 ↓

Liver Sauce for Roast Hare or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the liver in brown stock for hare or white stock for rabbit until fully cooked.
Pound the liver with herbs and shallot, then add the mixture to the gravy from the stew.
Stir in vinegar or lemon juice, and wine or port.
Simmer and season with salt and pepper.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,677 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Shallot + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together881 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Vinegar + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 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

Liver: Breaks down when pounded and stewed, thickening the sauce and giving it body and a rich flavour.
Vinegar or lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver flavour and balances the sauce.
White wine or port wine: Adds acidity and depth of flavour, with port adding sweetness to the sauce.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, clove, shallot, vinegar, white wine, pepper):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Plumfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, clove, shallot, vinegar, white wine, 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.