Skip to main content
Main

Hare Pie

A savory pie of hare, bacon, onions, and seasonings baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 406 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the hare pieces with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and mace.

  2. Place the seasoned hare in a jug with the butter and seal it.

  3. Submerge the jug in boiling water.

  4. Prepare a forcemeat by mixing bacon, onions, port wine, bread crumbs, winter savory, liver, nutmeg, and egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Raise the pie crust.

  2. Spread the forcemeat at the bottom of the crust.

  3. Add the hare and its juices to the pie.

  4. Cover the pie.

  5. Bake for 1.5 hours.

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. Nutmeg + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + winter savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

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

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 during slow cooking in the sealed jug.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the meat moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat, helping it hold together and stay moist in the pie.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and help it set into a firm, sliceable texture when baked.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the forcemeat, keeping it moist during baking.

The step that matters

Submerge the jug in boiling water. The sealed jug must be fully surrounded by water so the meat cooks gently and evenly. Too little heat or water can leave the hare unevenly cooked or dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, mace, butter, port wine, bread, winter savory):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, mace, butter, port wine, bread, winter savory. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes