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Hotch-potched Hare

A stew of hare with lettuce, cucumber, turnips, celery, and spices simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hotch-potched Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the hare by cutting it into small pieces.

  2. Place the hare in a jug with lettuce, cucumber, turnips, and celery.

  3. Cover with water and add spices to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer gently for about 5 hours until tender.

  2. 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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cucumber + turniptop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 through long, gentle simmering.
Turnips
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during cooking.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 5 hours until tender. Hare is lean and tough, so it needs long, low-temperature simmering to break down its connective tissue. A rapid boil can toughen the meat and make the broth cloudy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cucumber, turnip):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber, turnip. 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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