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To Hash a Hare

A stew of hare pieces cooked with red wine, water, anchovy, onion, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red wine and clove work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 849 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Hash a Hare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the hare pieces, red wine, water, chopped anchovy, and onion with cloves, then add the butter rolled in flour and mix well.

  2. Heat over a low flame until the hare is thoroughly hot, but do not let it boil.

  3. Serve the hare in a deep dish, removing the onion, and arrange snippets around it.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Hare
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender as it heats slowly in the liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the braising liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the stew's liquid.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth, blending into the sauce without a distinctly fishy taste.

The step that matters

Heat over a low flame without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can break the floured butter into a greasy, grainy sauce. Gentle heat keeps the hare tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, anchovy, onion, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, anchovy, onion, butter, flour. 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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