Why it works: Butter and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓
Modern Cookery
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the hare
Prepare forcemeat and restore the hare's legs to shape.
Line the body with bacon slices, trimming the rind and edges.
Sew up the hare and truss it as usual.
Roast and serve
Baste the hare with butter while roasting.
Serve with a sauce made from melted currant jelly in brown gravy.
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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Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,856 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
- Hare
- Forms the main meat of the dish, cooked whole and kept moist by basting.
- Bacon
- Lines the body, adding fat and savoury flavour that bastes the lean meat as it roasts.
- Butter
- Used for basting, adding fat that promotes browning and a rich surface.
- Currant jelly
- Melted into the gravy to add sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich sauce.
- Brown gravy
- Forms the base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and body.
The step that matters
Basting the hare while roasting. Hare is very lean, so without regular basting with fat the meat can dry out and toughen. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.
“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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