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Civet of Hare

A stew of hare pieces browned with bacon, flour, wine, stock, herbs, onions, mushrooms, and blood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Civet of Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut the hare into pieces and save the blood.

Brown the meat

  1. In a stewpan, fry the bacon until crispy, then remove it.

  2. Add the hare pieces to the pan and fry until browned.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the hare and stir to coat.

Stew and finish

  1. Pour in the red wine and stock, then add the sweet herbs, pepper, salt, onions, and mushrooms.

  2. Return the bacon to the pan and simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the reserved blood.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 becomes tender and rich during slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the pan and the sauce.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, helping to tenderise the meat and build the sauce flavour.
Reserved blood
Stirred in at the end to thicken and enrich the sauce, giving it body and dark colour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the blood. Blood thickens by coagulating proteins when heated. If it boils after being added, it can curdle and turn grainy, so it should be stirred in just before serving, off a hard boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, red wine, thyme, parsley, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, red wine, thyme, parsley, pepper, mushroom. 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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