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To Roast Hare

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Skin and wash the hare thoroughly.

  2. Soak the hare in water for 1-2 hours.

  3. If old, lard the hare or soak it in vinegar, then wash it well.

  4. Stuff the hare with a mixture of liver, anchovy, bacon, suet, herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, onion, and breadcrumbs, then sew it up.

  5. Baste the hare with milk until half-cooked, then switch to butter.

  6. If blood settles in the neck, soak it in warm water and nick the skin to release it.

  7. Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially.

  8. Serve with froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, anchovy, pepper, nutmeg, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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