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To Pot Hare

Hare meat cooked with butter, spices, and rich beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Pot Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Season the hare meat and bake it with butter.

  2. Once cold, remove the meat from the bones and beat it in a mortar.

Season and pot

  1. If not seasoned enough, add coarse sea salt, mace, black pepper, nutmeg, and melted butter mixed with 1-2 tablespoons of gravy from the hare.

  2. Add about ½ cup of rich beef gravy and mix well.

  3. Transfer the mixture to small pots and cover with butter.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hare meat
Provides the main body and rich, meaty flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and seals the pots against air.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Rich beef gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the beaten meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, pepper, nutmeg, beef):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, pepper, nutmeg, beef. 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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