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Hotch-potched Hare

A stew of hare with lettuce, cucumber, turnips, celery, cloves, allspice, black pepper, onions, lemon peel, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hotch-potched Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the hare by cutting it into small pieces.

  2. Place the hare in a stewpan with lettuce, cucumber, turnips, celery, cloves, allspice, black pepper, onions, and lemon peel.

  3. Cover with water and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Simmer gently for about 5 hours until tender.

  2. Remove the hare and keep it warm by the fire.

  3. Thicken the gravy by mixing flesh butter and flour, then stir into the stewpan.

  4. Let the gravy boil for about 10 minutes, then strain it over the hare before serving.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it boils.
Flesh butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy and helps it thicken smoothly with the flour.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after boiling. Scum rises as the water comes to a boil and can cloud the stock and taste bitter. Skimming it off keeps the broth clear and clean-flavored over the long simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cucumber, turnip, celery, clove, allspice, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber, turnip, celery, clove, allspice, 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.

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