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Hare Pie

A pie filled with hare meat, liver, brains, and a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Clean the hare thoroughly and remove all blood.

  2. Place the hare in a stew pan with the sweet herbs, shallots, cloves, allspice, black pepper, port wine, and enough broth to cover it.

  3. Cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Remove the prime parts (back, legs, blade bones) and set aside to cool.

  5. Continue to simmer the remaining parts until the gravy is rich and reduced.

Make the stuffing

  1. Prepare stuffing with the hare's liver and brains, seasoning with pepper, salt, and cayenne.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the crust, add the meat, stuffing, and gravy, then cover with more crust.

  2. Bake until the crust is golden brown.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Strain and thicken the remaining gravy, adding half the juice of a lemon and 1-2 tablespoons of port wine.

  2. Pour the hot gravy into the pie before serving.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 through long slow simmering.
Hare liver and brains
Enrich the stuffing with rich, soft texture and concentrated flavour.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the braising liquid as it cooks down.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the braising liquid and finished gravy.
Pie crust
Encloses the meat and stuffing, holding in moisture while browning to golden.

The step that matters

Simmering the hare gently. Simmering slowly until tender, rather than boiling hard, keeps the meat from toughening and dissolving into stringy shreds, while the liquid reduces into a rich gravy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, port wine, liver):

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, port wine, liver. 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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