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Potted Hare

A hare cooked in butter, then ground and returned to the pot with gravy and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Bake the seasoned hare with butter until cooked.

  2. Once cooled, remove the meat from the bones.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the meat in a mortar.

  2. If the mixture is not flavorful enough, add salt, mace, pepper, and melted fresh butter mixed with a spoonful or two of the hare's gravy. Mix well.

Pot and serve

  1. Place into small pots, covering with butter.

  2. Bake the legs and back at the bottom of the jar to keep them moist.

  3. Place the bones over them.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Provides the main meat, which is beaten into a smooth, spreadable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and seals the top of the pots to keep the meat moist.
Gravy from the hare
Adds moisture and concentrated meaty flavor to the mixture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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