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Roast Hare

Roast hare with bacon and stuffing, marinated, trussed, and roasted, basted with butter, suet, vinegar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cleaned hare in a game marinade all day, turning occasionally.

  2. Remove the hare from the marinade, wipe it dry, and stuff it with bacon and turkey stuffing.

  3. Fry minced kidneys and heart with onion, cool, pound, and mix with the stuffing.

  4. Truss the hare by securing the legs and head with skewers.

Roast

  1. Lard the back of the hare with bacon slices, wrap in oiled paper, and roast over a fire.

  2. Baste constantly with melted butter or clarified beef suet mixed with equal parts vinegar and water.

  3. Remove bacon strips near the end, dredge the back with flour, and allow the skin to brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Hare
Is the main meat, which the marinade and long roasting make tender and flavourful.
Bacon
Lards the lean meat, adding fat and moisture as it melts during roasting.
Butter or beef suet
Fat for basting, adding richness and helping the surface brown.
Flour
Dredged over the back near the end, helping the skin brown and crisp.
Onion
Cooked with the kidneys and heart, adding aroma to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting constantly. Lean game dries out over an open fire, so frequent basting with fat and a little acid keeps the meat moist and helps the surface brown evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, butter, vinegar, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, butter, vinegar, flour. 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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