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Civet of Hare

A stew of hare pieces browned in butter and bacon, cooked slowly in red wine with herbs, spices, onions, mushrooms, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Civet of Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the hare

  1. In a pot, toss hare pieces in butter with bacon until browned.

  2. Add flour to the pot.

  3. Add red wine to the pot.

  4. Season the pot with pepper, spices, herbs, bay leaf, clove, and onion.

  5. Simmer slowly by the fire for 5 hours or in a jar in the oven.

Prepare the onions

  1. In a separate pan, brown small onions in butter.

  2. Moisten the onions with stock.

  3. Add sugar to the onions.

  4. Cook the onions slowly.

Finish and serve

  1. When hare is nearly cooked, remove herbs and onion from the pot.

  2. Add mushrooms to the pot.

  3. Season with salt if needed.

  4. Finish cooking hare.

  5. Serve with sauce, small onions, mushrooms, and fried sippets.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

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, slow simmering.
Butter
Browns the hare and small onions, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a rich sauce as it cooks with the wine.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, and helps tenderise the meat during slow cooking.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the hare as it browns.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the hare is tender. Hare is lean and firm, so it needs long, gentle simmering to break down its connective tissue. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, red wine, pepper, clove, sugar, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, red wine, pepper, clove, sugar, mushroom. 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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