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Mock Hare

A beef dish cooked in a spiced gravy, served with red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Mock Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into slices the size of a hare joint.

  2. Fry the beef slices in butter or beef dripping.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine stock or water, cloves, sliced onion, pepper, salt, and gravy coloring.

  2. Add the fried beef to the gravy and stew gently for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Thicken the gravy and serve with red currant jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet or steak
Provides the meat that is stewed until tender in the gravy.
Butter or beef dripping
Fat that browns the beef slices before they are stewed.
Stock or water
Liquid that forms the gravy and keeps the meat moist during stewing.
Sliced onion
Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1.5 to 2 hours. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue in the beef break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender without drying out or toughening. A hard boil tightens muscle fibres and makes the meat tough.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, clove, onion, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, clove, onion, 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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