Name: Roasted Leveret
Ingredients: 1 young hare (leveret); 2-3 ounces fresh butter; flour for dredging; warm milk for basting; 2 handfuls bread crumbs; ½ handful finely-chopped fresh beef suet; parsley; lemon thyme; 1-2 eggs

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roasted Leveret

Ingredients

Directions

Stuff the leveret with the stuffing made from bread crumbs, suet, parsley, lemon thyme, and eggs.
Spit the leveret and roast it over the fire.
Dredge the leveret with flour and baste it with warm milk while roasting.
When three-quarters done, add fresh butter to the dripping pan.
Serve with gravy, melted butter, and melted 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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).