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A hare stew with bacon, herbs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,711 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: butter

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the shoulders and legs from the hare and cut the back into three pieces.

  2. Combine the hare pieces with bay leaf, shallots, onion, and vinegar in a deep dish.

  3. Let the mixture marinate for 24 hours.

Make the stew

  1. Brown the head, neck, ribs, liver, and heart in frothed butter seasoned well.

  2. Add bacon, herbs, carrot, and allspice to the pot.

  3. Simmer in water until the liquid is reduced by half.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add the marinated hare pieces to the strained liquid.

  6. Stew until the hare is fully cooked.

Serve and use leftovers

  1. If desired, brown 6 onions.

  2. Stew the onions in part of the gravy, serving them around the hare.

  3. If there are leftovers, remove the meat from the bones.

  4. Combine the leftover meat with gravy, red wine, and water to make soup.

  5. Stir a spoonful of ketchup into the original gravy.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,711 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,916 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,021 recipes

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

  4. Clove + red winetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 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

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing in liquid.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that enriches the gravy as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the marinade, helping to tenderise the lean hare and sharpen the flavour.
Shallots
Soften during cooking and add a mild, sweet aroma to the marinade and gravy.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the soup made from leftovers.

The step that matters

Stew until the hare is fully cooked. Hare is lean and dries out and toughens if it cooks too hard. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue soften slowly, keeping the meat moist and tender.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, clove, vinegar, carrot, allspice, red wine):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, clove, vinegar, carrot, allspice, red wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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