Name: To Toast Hare
Ingredients: 1 hare; water; lard (optional); vinegar (optional); milk; butter; stuffing (liver, anchovy, fat bacon, suet, herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, onion, bread crumbs, 1 egg); currant-jelly sauce

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Toast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Skin the hare and wash it thoroughly.
Soak the hare in water for 1-2 hours.
If using an old hare, lard it to make it tender or soak it in vinegar, then wash it well in water.
Stuff the hare's belly with the prepared stuffing and sew it up.
Baste the hare with milk until half cooked, then switch to butter.
If blood settles 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 initially.
Serve with froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and currant-jelly sauce.

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.

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).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together199 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 (vinegar, milk, butter, liver, anchovy, pepper, onion):

Garlicfits better
Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegthe original

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