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Baked Hare with Truffles

A roasted hare stuffed with truffles and chestnuts, served with a Madeira cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Hare with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the hare

  1. Prepare the hare for roasting.

  2. Stuff the hare with a rich forcemeat containing chopped truffle and boiled chestnuts.

  3. Rub the hare with a mixture of salt, pepper, nutmeg, and ground cloves.

  4. Sprinkle the hare thickly with flour.

  5. Wrap the hare in the skin from a loin of veal.

  6. Place the wrapped hare in a baking dish.

Roast the hare

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about an hour.

  2. Remove the skin from the hare.

  3. Baste the hare.

  4. Add more flour if needed to brown it nicely.

Make the truffle mixture

  1. Chop the truffles finely with parsley, celery, beef suet, and boiled chestnuts.

  2. Season the chopped truffles with salt and cayenne.

  3. Moisten the truffle mixture with cream and egg whites.

  4. Place the truffle mixture in the baking tin half an hour before serving.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove fat from the pan.

  2. Add mixed Madeira and milk to the pan.

  3. Stir until boiling for five minutes.

  4. Pour the sauce into the dish.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Chestnut + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Is the main meat, cooked whole and kept moist by its wrapping.
Truffle
Gives a rich, earthy aroma to the forcemeat and the truffle mixture.
Egg whites
Bind the truffle mixture so it holds together when baked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the truffle mixture.
Flour
Coats the hare so its surface browns during roasting.
Madeira and milk
Form the sauce liquid, adding sweetness and body after the fat is removed.

The step that matters

Browning the hare with flour. Flour on the surface helps the hare brown during roasting, but too little leaves it pale and too much can form a thick, dry crust. Adding more only as needed keeps the browning even.

“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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