Name: Hare, Roast
Ingredients: 1 hare; 1 onion, stuck with 6 cloves; 1 lemon, peeled and halved; pepper, to taste; cayenne, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; 1 cup red-currant jelly; 1 cup wine; forcemeat balls (fried or baked)

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hare, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the hare by seasoning it with pepper, cayenne, and coarse sea salt.
Place the hare in a jar with the onion and lemon, then cover tightly.

Stew and serve

Submerge the jar in boiling water and let it stew until the hare is tender, about 3 to 4 hours.
When nearly done, pour in the wine and add the forcemeat balls.
Serve with red‑currant jelly.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare: Is the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Red-currant jelly: Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich, savory meat.
Wine: Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid.