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Potted Hare

A preserved hare cooked with butter, salt, mace, pepper, and gravy, then mashed and packed into small pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Season the hare and bake it with butter.

  2. Once cooled, remove the meat from the bones.

Make the filling

  1. In a mortar, beat the meat and add salt, mace, pepper, and melted butter mixed with a spoonful of gravy.

  2. Mix well and place into small pots, covering with butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the legs and back at the bottom of the jar to keep them moist, placing the bones over them.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Provides the main meat, which is beaten into a spreadable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and the top layer seals the pots against air.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the beaten meat.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Covering the pots with butter. A layer of melted butter over the meat excludes air, which slows drying and spoilage. The butter must fully cover the surface, or the exposed meat can dry out and oxidise.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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