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To Pot Hare

A slow‑cooked hare simmered in butter, then minced, spiced, and packed into pots with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 ↓

To Pot Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin and clean the hare.

  2. Bake it for 3 hours with enough butter to keep the outside from hardening.

Make the potting mixture

  1. Allow it to cool completely, then remove the meat from the bones and mince it.

  2. Season the minced meat with salt, pepper, mace, and cloves, ensuring no flavor predominates.

  3. Add the baking butter to the meat; if needed, add more butter to moisten it well.

  4. Pound the mixture until smooth, removing any sinew or tough pieces.

Pot and seal

  1. Fill your potting pots with the mixture and cover with clarified butter.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 is pounded into a smooth, spreadable texture.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and keeps the outside of the meat from drying and hardening during baking.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed top layer that protects the potted meat from air.

The step that matters

Baking the hare with butter. Too little butter lets the outside harden and dry, while enough fat keeps the meat moist and tender through the long bake.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, clove. 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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