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A Hare

A stew of hare marinated in vinegar, browned with bacon, herbs, and allspice, then simmered and served with optional onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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)

Directions

Marinate the hare

  1. Remove the shoulders and legs from the hare.

  2. Cut the back into three pieces.

  3. Place the hare pieces in a deep dish with the bay leaf, shallots, onion, and enough vinegar to cover.

  4. Let marinate for 24 hours.

Make the gravy

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

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

  3. Simmer in water until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the marinated hare pieces along with the marinate.

  5. Stew until fully cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Brown 6 onions.

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

  3. Remove the meat from the bones.

  4. Combine with forcemeat balls, remaining gravy, red wine, and water to make a soup.

  5. Stir in mushroom ketchup to the original gravy if desired.

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 marinating and slow stewing.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps tenderise the hare meat before cooking.
Frothed butter
Fat for browning the offal and seasonings, building colour and rich flavour in the gravy.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat that enriches the gravy as it simmers.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stewing the hare until fully cooked. Hare is lean and dense, so it needs long, gentle simmering in liquid to become tender; rushing it leaves the meat tough and dry. Brown the pieces well first for colour and flavour.

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, butter, carrot, allspice, red wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, clove, vinegar, butter, 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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