Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Hare

A roasted hare stuffed with liver, anchovy, bacon, suet, herbs, bread crumbs, and egg, basted with milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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. Wipe the hare well. If it is old, lard it or soak it in vinegar, then wash it thoroughly.

  2. Prepare a stuffing with chopped liver, anchovy, bacon, suet, herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, bread crumbs, and egg to bind.

Roast and serve

  1. Stuff the hare, sew it up, and baste with milk until half cooked, then switch to butter.

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

  3. Serve with rich gravy and currant jelly sauce, with a little gravy in 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. Bread + buttertop 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. Bread + milktop 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, whose flesh becomes tender and juicy with slow, gentle roasting.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together rather than falling apart when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat in the stuffing, giving it body and a softer texture.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes browning of the outer surface during the final roasting.
Milk
Protein and sugars in the milk brown gently on the surface while basting.

The step that matters

Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially. Starting with gentle, indirect heat lets the thick meat cook through evenly before the surface over-browns or dries out. Rushing with intense heat can leave the outside burnt and the centre underdone.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, anchovy, bread, egg, milk, butter. 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.

More roasted hare recipes

with Cream Sauce 3 See all 96 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes