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Stewed Pukaki

A hare stew made with onions, herbs, spices, bacon, mushroom ketchup, and finished with red currant jelly and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Pukaki

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Wash the hare and cut it into neat joints.

  2. Flour the joints and fry them until light brown.

  3. Fry the diced bacon until crispy.

Simmer

  1. Cover the meat with boiling water or rich brown stock.

  2. Add the onions, herbs (tied in muslin), cloves, allspice, lemon peel, black pepper, salt, and pepper.

  3. Simmer until tender, about 3 to 4 hours for hare.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat and strain off the onions, herbs, and lemon.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour, boiling for 3 minutes.

  3. Return the meat to the gravy, add red currant jelly and port wine, and serve hot.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the joints for browning and thickens the gravy with butter.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and, with flour, forms a thickening roux.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour to the frying stage.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, savoury gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity sweetness to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Hare is a lean, muscular meat with tough connective tissue. Long, gentle simmering at low heat breaks down collagen into gelatin, making the meat tender. A hard boil toughens and dries the fibres, so keep the liquid just below a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, lemon, mushroom, ketchup, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, lemon, mushroom, ketchup, flour. 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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