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Mock Hare

A roast beef dish marinated in port wine and vinegar, stuffed with fowl liver, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and currant work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mock Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lean meat in port wine and vinegar for 48 hours.

  2. Cut the meat open and lard it.

  3. Make a stuffing using the raw liver of a fowl and lay it on the meat.

  4. Roll and tie the meat tightly.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast it using a hanging jack, basting with the soaking liquid.

  2. Add a little more port wine and vinegar, mixing in nearly 1 teaspoon of pounded allspice.

  3. Serve with gravy and 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. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat from a sirloin of beef
Forms the main body of the roast, which becomes tender with long soaking and slow cooking.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the soaking liquid and basting sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat during the long soak.
Raw liver of a fowl
Forms a moist, rich stuffing that sits inside the rolled meat.
Pounded allspice
Contributes warm aromatic spice to the meat and its sauce.

The step that matters

Roll and tie the meat tightly. A tight roll keeps the stuffing enclosed and the joint an even shape, so it cooks at a uniform rate instead of unravelling or drying in places.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, beef, port wine, vinegar, liver, allspice):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, beef, port wine, vinegar, liver, allspice. 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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