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To Roast Hare

A hare roasted with lard or vinegar, basted in milk and butter, stuffed with liver, served with gravy and currant-jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin the hare.

  2. Wash the hare thoroughly.

  3. Soak the hare in water for 1-2 hours.

  4. If the hare is old, lard it to make it tender.

  5. If the hare is old, soak it in vinegar.

  6. Wash the hare well in water.

  7. Stuff the belly with a rich stuffing.

  8. Sew the belly up.

Roast and baste

  1. Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially.

  2. Baste with milk until half cooked.

  3. Switch to butter for basting.

  4. If blood settles in the neck, soak it in warm water.

  5. Warm it by the fire.

  6. Nick the skin to release the blood.

Serve

  1. Serve with froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and currant-jelly sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + livertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + livertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Milk + livertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat, which is lean and can dry out without fat and moisture during roasting.
Lard
Adds fat that helps tenderise an older, tougher hare during cooking.
Milk
Moistens the surface during early basting and promotes gentle browning.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the basting liquid, encouraging golden browning and flavour.
Stuffing made with liver
Adds moisture and rich flavour inside the belly as the hare roasts.

The step that matters

Keep the hare away from the fire at first. Starting with gentle heat lets the thick meat cook through without the outside scorching or drying before the centre is done.

“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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