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Civet of Hare

A civet is a rich stewed dish of hare, thickened with flour and finished with a sieved sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Civet of Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin and clean the hare.

  2. Chop off the legs and divide them into neat joints.

  3. Divide the body of the hare up the back.

  4. Cut the bacon into dice.

Brown and braise

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the bacon and fry for 1-2 minutes, then remove it.

  3. Dry the hare pieces, add them to the butter, and fry until browned.

  4. Sift in 2 tablespoons of flour and fry together for 5 minutes.

  5. Gradually add the stock and claret.

  6. Bring to a boil and skim well.

  7. Add the onions, herbs, spices (in a muslin bag), Bovril, and salt.

  8. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  9. Remove the hare pieces and keep them hot.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Take out the bag of herbs.

  2. Rub the sauce through a sieve.

  3. If not thick enough, reduce it by boiling.

  4. Once thick, add the hare pieces and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Lift out the hare and arrange on a hot dish.

  6. Garnish with hot button mushrooms and croutons.

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

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with the fat and absorbing liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the frying of the hare and bacon, adding richness and browning the meat.
Bacon
Adds savoury, salty fat that flavours the butter and the braising liquid.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that deepens the sauce as it reduces.
Bovril
Adds concentrated savoury meaty flavour that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce by sieving and reducing. The sauce gets its body from the flour and from reduction by boiling. If it is not reduced enough after sieving, it stays thin and waters down the dish. Simmering the hare in the thickened sauce keeps the meat tender without boiling it hard.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, mushroom, flour, butter, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mushroom, flour, butter, 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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