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 Hare
Ingredients
Directions
Soak the hare in water for 1-2 hours.
If the hare is old, lard it to make it tender or soak it in vinegar, then wash it well in water.
Stuff the hare with the stuffing and sew it up.
Baste with milk until half cooked, then switch to butter.
If blood has settled in the neck, soak it in warm water and warm it by the fire, nicking the skin to let it out.
Keep the hare at a distance from the fire at first.
Serve with froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and currant-jelly sauce.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,475 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,856 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Milk + saucetop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,759 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sauce):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Peachfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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