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Hare with Cream Sauce

A hare roasted with butter, then served with a cream sauce made from milk, sour cream, butter, flour, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hare with Cream Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the hare

  1. Chop off the shoulders and fore-part of the hare from the loin.

  2. Remove the skin from the fillets and thighs, and lard them with thin strips of bacon.

  3. Remove the bone from the thighs.

  4. Tie the thighs together with string.

  5. Run a wooden skewer through the thighs.

  6. Place the hare in a baking dish.

  7. Dust the hare with salt.

  8. Pour warmed butter over the hare.

Roast the hare

  1. Bake the hare for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C), basting frequently.

  2. Add sour cream to the hare.

  3. Finish cooking until done.

  4. Pour the basting milk into a saucepan.

  5. Add sweet herbs to the saucepan.

  6. Let the mixture stew by the fire for 20 minutes.

  7. Strain the sauce.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt 2 oz of butter with flour in the saucepan. Stir until mixed.

  2. Gradually add the strained milk. Stir until boiling.

  3. Move the saucepan to the side of the fire.

  4. Add chopped liver. Warm through.

Serve

  1. Serve the hare on a hot dish with a small quantity of gravy around it.

  2. Fill a sauceboat with the cream sauce.

  3. 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Is the main meat, cooked whole and served as the centrepiece of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture while basting, and forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Milk
Forms the basting liquid and, thickened with butter and flour, becomes the cream sauce.
Sour cream
Adds tang and creaminess to the hare and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Basting the hare frequently. Frequent basting spoons fat and liquid over the meat, keeping its surface moist while it roasts, since lean game dries out easily.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, cream, flour, liver, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, cream, flour, liver, pepper, nutmeg. 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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