Skip to main content
Main

Hare Pie

A savory pie filled with hare, beef, bacon, and forcemeat, seasoned with port wine, vinegar, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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. Mix port wine, vinegar, and red currant jelly into the gravy.

  2. Prepare a forcemeat as described for turkey, adding finely chopped liver and kidneys.

Layer the pie

  1. Layer forcemeat at the bottom of the pie dish.

  2. Add a layer of bacon slices, then the coarser joints of the hare, dust with spiced pepper, and fill gaps with forcemeat.

  3. Repeat layers of bacon and hare, finishing with forcemeat.

  4. Pour in gravy until it almost reaches the top layer.

Bake

  1. Cover with pie crust 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Port wine + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Hares
Provide the main meat, whose joints become tender and rich during the long bake.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the meat as it cooks.
Gravy beef
Breaks down into the gravy base, adding body and savoury depth to the filling.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and deep aroma to the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and balances the port.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that helps set and glaze the gravy.

The step that matters

Pour in gravy until it almost reaches the top layer. Leaving the gravy slightly below the top keeps the filling from overflowing during baking, while still leaving enough liquid to keep the lean meat moist as it cooks and gelatinises.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, vinegar, red currant, beef, 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes