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To Roast a Hare with Cream Sauce

A hare roasted with milk, herbs, and a cream sauce made from liver, butter, flour, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast a Hare with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the liver and chop it very fine.

  2. Mix a small portion of the liver with the stuffing. Reserve the rest of the liver for the sauce.

Roast the hare

  1. Place a bunch of sweet herbs in a dripping pan. Pour 1 quart of milk over the herbs.

  2. Baste the hare continually with the milk.

  3. When the hare is more than half roasted, remove the milk. Add another quart of milk to the herbs.

  4. Slit the neck of the hare to let the gravy run into the milk. Skewer the head down again.

  5. Continue basting until 20 minutes before serving. Remove the milk.

  6. Baste the hare with butter. Dredge the hare with flour twice during this time.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Combine the two quantities of milk. Stir in a lump of butter and flour. Add the chopped liver.

  2. Warm the sauce over low heat. Stir the sauce constantly without boiling.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Milk
Forms the basis of the cream sauce and keeps the hare moist while it roasts.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and lightly coats the hare to help it brown.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body to the stuffing and sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, enriching both the basting and the sauce.
Chopped liver
Adds savoury depth to the stuffing and the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce constantly without boiling. Milk and egg-enriched sauces can curdle or scorch when overheated. Gentle heat with constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened by the flour.

“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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