Name: Hare, Roasted a LA Francaise
Ingredients: back of a hare; butter; vinegar; coarse sea salt; chives, chopped fine; shallots, chopped fine

Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 447 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare and roast

Lard the back of the hare well.
Roast the hare, basting it with butter.

Serve

Once done, serve with a sauce made from its own gravy, blood of the hare, vinegar, coarse sea salt, chives, and shallots.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together447 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Vinegar + shallottop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together2,282 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + chivetop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + shallottop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,379 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Vinegar + chivetop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,065 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Back of a hare: Main cut of meat, cooked by roasting to become tender and browned.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and basting with it helps the surface brown.
Shallots: Add a mild, sharp onion flavour to the sauce.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the rich sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the chive

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

Chivethe original
Mustardabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, shallot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.