Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,711 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Also mentioned in the method: butter
Directions
Marinate
Remove the shoulders and legs from the hare and cut the back into three pieces.
In a deep dish, combine the hare pieces with bay leaf, shallots, onion, and vinegar. Marinate for 24 hours.
Make the gravy
Brown the head, neck, ribs, liver, and heart in frothed butter seasoned well.
Add the bacon, herbs, carrot, and allspice. Simmer in water until reduced by half.
Strain the mixture and add the marinated hare pieces.
Stew until fully cooked.
Serve
If desired, brown the optional onions and stew them in part of the gravy, serving them around the hare.
If there are leftovers, remove the meat from the bones, combine with gravy, red wine, and water to make soup.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together7,711 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Clove + carrottop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together4,916 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Carrot + allspicetop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together1,021 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Clove + red winetop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together636 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
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Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together21,599 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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 stewing.
- Vinegar
- Acidity in the marinade helps tenderise the meat and adds a sharp, bright note.
- Bacon
- Adds fat and salty, smoky flavour that enriches the gravy.
- Shallots
- Add a mild, sweet onion flavour that deepens the marinade and gravy.
- Red wine
- Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the soup made from leftovers.
The step that matters
Stew until fully cooked. Hare is lean and firm, and it needs long, gentle simmering so the connective tissue breaks down and the meat becomes tender. Rushing this step or boiling hard leaves the meat tough and dry.
Flavor stand-ins for the onion
The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, clove, vinegar, carrot, allspice, red wine):
- Capsicumbetter flavor fit
- Mustardbetter flavor fit
- Parsnipbetter flavor fit
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, clove, vinegar, carrot, allspice, red wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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