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Fillets of Hare Sautes with Truffles

Fillets of hare sautéed with truffles, bacon, and a hare-forcemeat quenelle croustade, finished with Spanish sauce and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Fillets of Hare Sautes with Truffles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fillets

  1. Cut off the fillets from the hares.

  2. Stuff the fillets with sliced truffles and roll the thin end around.

Cook

  1. Place the fillets in a sauté pan with a little butter and cover with thin slices of fat bacon.

  2. Cook in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

Plate and serve

  1. Prepare a croustade filled with hare-forcemeat quenelles.

  2. Arrange the cooked fillets in a circle around the croustade.

  3. Pour Spanish sauce, reduced with a little claret, over the dish.

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. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 fillets
Provide the main lean meat, cooked gently so it stays tender and moist.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that flavours the meat from inside as it cooks.
Fat bacon
Covers the fillets, adding fat that bastes the lean meat and keeps it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fillets brown lightly in the pan.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth when reduced into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C). Lean hare fillets dry out and toughen quickly when overcooked. A moderate oven heats the meat gently, so the fillets cook through while staying juicy under their bacon covering.

“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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