Name: Hare Pie
Ingredients: hare, cut up; eggs; forcemeat made from hare liver; jelly (if in a crust); warm gravy (if in a dish); ⅓ cup port wine

Why it works: Liver and port wine work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 108 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and bake

Season the hare as if preparing to jug it.
Bake the seasoned hare with eggs and forcemeat in a raised crust or dish.

Serve

When serving, raise the lid.
If in a crust, cover with jelly; if in a dish, cover with warm gravy mixed with port wine.

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.

Liver + port winetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together108 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Egg + livertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,177 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + port winetop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together406 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare: Lean meat that forms the bulk of the filling and gives the pie its savoury flavour.
Eggs: Bind the filling and set as the pie bakes, holding it together when sliced.
Forcemeat made from hare liver: Adds moisture and richness to the lean hare as it bakes.
Port wine: Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the warm gravy.

“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.