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Mock Hare

A beef fillet stuffed with parsley, suet, breadcrumbs, onion, lemon zest, herbs, pepper, and salt, then rolled and roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Cut out the fillet from a sirloin of beef, leaving the fat to roast with the joint.

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing the suet, breadcrumbs, parsley, onion, lemon zest, dried herbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the egg, ensuring it is not too wet.

Roll and roast

  1. Spread the stuffing on the beef fillet, roll it up, and bind it with kitchen twine.

  2. Insert a skewer through the rolled beef and roast it.

Serve

  1. Serve with traditional accompaniments for roast hare or stew it with a rich thickened gravy, garnished with forcemeat balls.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet
Forms the meat that is wrapped around the stuffing and cooked as the main joint.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during roasting.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help the stuffing hold together and stay tender.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds its shape when rolled and sliced.

The step that matters

Moistening the stuffing with egg. If the mixture is too wet, it will loosen and leak out during rolling and roasting. Breadcrumbs soak up liquid, so the mixture should be firm enough to hold its shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, lemon, egg, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, lemon, egg, pepper. 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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