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Liver Sauce for Hare

A sauce made from hare liver, stock, butter, and seasonings, simmered and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Liver Sauce for Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver and broth

  1. Cut the liver into dice.

  2. Melt 1 oz of butter in a small saucepan.

  3. Add the shallot.

  4. Fry gently until it begins to color.

  5. Add the liver.

  6. Stir for 1 minute.

  7. Gradually add the stock, peppercorns, cloves, and herbs, and simmer until the liver is tender.

  8. Strain the broth.

  9. Pound the liver.

  10. Rub it through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 1 oz of butter in another saucepan.

  2. Add 1 oz of flour.

  3. Fry without browning.

  4. Stir in a little of the broth.

  5. Mix in the pounded liver and shallot.

  6. Add the remaining broth, red-currant jelly, port wine, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

  7. Bring almost to a boil.

  8. Serve.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Gives the sauce its body and rich, savoury flavour once pounded and sieved.
Butter
Carries the shallot and forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux with the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its flavour.
Port wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness to the sauce.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich liver.

The step that matters

Fry the flour without browning. Cooking the flour and butter gently into a pale roux lets starch thicken the sauce smoothly. Browning adds a nutty, darker flavour and weakens thickening, and the flour can taste raw if undercooked.

“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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