Name: To Roast Hare
Ingredients: 1 hare, skinned and cleaned; ½ cup milk; 2 tablespoons butter; For stuffing: liver of the hare, 1 anchovy, 2 ounces fat bacon, 1 ounce suet, herbs (to taste), ¼ teaspoon pepper, ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, a pinch of nutmeg, 1 small onion (finely chopped), 1 cup bread crumbs, 1 egg

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 ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

1 hare, skinned and cleaned
½ cup milk
2 tablespoons butter
For stuffing: liver of the hare, 1 anchovy, 2 ounces fat bacon, 1 ounce suet, herbs (to taste), ¼ teaspoon pepper, ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, a pinch of nutmeg, 1 small onion (finely chopped), 1 cup bread crumbs, 1 egg

Directions

Wash the hare thoroughly and soak it in water for 1-2 hours. If it's old, lard it to make it tender, or soak it in vinegar, then wash it well afterward.
Stuff the hare's belly with the prepared stuffing and sew it up.
Baste the hare with milk until half cooked, then switch to basting with butter.
If blood has settled in the neck, soak it in warm water and warm it by the fire, nicking the skin to let it out.
Keep the hare at a distance from the fire at first.
Serve with a froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and currant jelly sauce, with the gravy in the dish.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, liver, anchovy, pepper, onion, bread):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Garlicfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, liver, anchovy, pepper, onion, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.