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Hare Pie

A savory pie filled with hare or rabbit, bacon, forcemeat, and gravy, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and pepper work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 267 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Make gravy from the hare, skimming off the fat.

  2. Prepare a plain forcemeat, mixing in finely chopped liver and kidneys.

Layer the pie

  1. Spread a thin layer of forcemeat in a pie dish.

  2. Layer bacon slices over the forcemeat.

  3. Add coarser pieces of hare, dust with spiced pepper, and fill gaps with forcemeat.

  4. Repeat layers of bacon and hare, finishing with forcemeat.

  5. Pour gravy into the dish until just below the top layer.

Bake

  1. Cover with pie crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour and 15 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. Red currant + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + red curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

Pepper and mace 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

Hares (or rabbits)
Provides the meat that forms the body of the pie and the base for the gravy.
Forcemeat
Fills gaps between meat pieces and keeps the filling moist and tender as it cooks.
Bacon slices
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the lean meat as it bakes.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich, gamey meat.
Port
Adds depth and a sweet, fortified flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Pour gravy to just below the top layer. Too much gravy floods the crust and makes the base soggy, while too little leaves the meat dry as it bakes, so the level should be checked before covering.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, red currant, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, red currant, 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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