Skip to main content
Main

Hare Pie

A savory pie made with hare, bacon, and gravy, layered with forcemeat and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Red currant and pepper work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 267 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the hare by cutting it into pieces.

  2. Mix the port, vinegar, and red currant jelly into the gravy.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer the bottom of a pie dish with bacon slices.

  2. Add a layer of hare pieces, dust with spiced pepper, and fill gaps with forcemeat.

  3. Repeat layers of bacon and hare, adding forcemeat each time until the dish is full.

  4. Pour gravy into the dish until it almost reaches the top layer.

Bake

  1. Cover the pie with pastry and bake at 400 °F (200 °C) for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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 currant + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Vinegar + red curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Red currant + macetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long slow bake.
Forcemeat
Fills the gaps between pieces, adding moisture and a firm, savoury body to the pie.
Bacon slices
Adds fat and salty, savoury flavour that seasons the meat as it cooks.
Gravy
Supplies moisture that keeps the meat from drying out during baking.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Pour gravy to the right level. Gravy must nearly reach the top layer so the meat stays moist as it bakes; too little leaves the hare dry, while the filled dish needs room so the pastry lid seals and cooks evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, red currant, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Peppermintfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, red currant, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes