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To Roast Hare

A hare roasted with a liver-anchovy-bacon stuffing, basted in milk and butter, served with gravy and currant-jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the hare thoroughly and soak it in water for 1-2 hours.

  2. If the hare is old, lard it to make it tender.

  3. Prepare a stuffing with the liver, anchovy, bacon, suet, herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, onion, bread crumbs, and egg.

  4. Stuff the hare's belly and sew it up.

Roast and serve

  1. Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially.

  2. Baste the hare with milk until half-cooked, then switch to butter.

  3. Serve with froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and currant-jelly sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 kept moist by soaking and basting.
Milk
Basting liquid that keeps the surface moist during the first part of roasting.
Butter
Basting fat added later, adding richness and helping the surface brown.
Liver
Forms the richer, moister core of the stuffing.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially. Starting far from the heat lets the thick meat cook through gently before the surface browns, reducing the risk of a scorched outside and undercooked centre.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, liver, anchovy, pepper, onion, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, liver, anchovy, pepper, onion, bread. 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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