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Hare Pie

A savory pie filled with braised hare and farce, topped with crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper 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 ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and braise

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Bone and cut the hare into pieces.

  3. In a pan, braise the hare in butter with garlic, pepper, salt, and sugar.

  4. Make a farce with the liver and lights, seasoning it with garlic, port wine, and sugar.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the hare and farce in a pie dish.

  2. Cover with pie crust and seal tightly.

  3. Bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.

Finish

  1. Once cooled, cover the pie with clarified butter and store it properly.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 for the filling and its rich, savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the meat moist while braising.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the farce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns to a golden finish when baked.

The step that matters

Seal the crust tightly. A tight seal traps steam inside the pie so the meat stays moist, and it prevents juices from leaking out and burning in the oven.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, garlic, pepper, sugar, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, garlic, pepper, sugar, port wine. 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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