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Forcemeat for Hare

A forcemeat mixture of mushrooms, butter, spices, and eggs for hare.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Forcemeat for Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely mince the mushrooms and mix with bread crumbs.

  2. Melt 1 oz of butter and combine with the mushroom mixture.

  3. Add salt, cayenne, mace, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  4. Mix in the unbeaten yolk of 1 or 2 eggs until well combined.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Poach the balls in simmering water for 5 to 6 minutes or fry in remaining butter for 6 to 8 minutes.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour that gives the forcemeat its main bulk.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the balls hold together when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns when the balls are fried.

The step that matters

Mix in the unbeaten yolk of 1 or 2 eggs until well combined. Egg yolk is the binder that holds the crumbs and mushrooms together. If the mixture is not evenly combined, pockets of loose crumb can make the balls crumble during poaching or frying.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, egg, bread. 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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