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Hare Pie

A savory pie filled with hare meat, liver, brains, and a rich gravy.

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 cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Clean the hare thoroughly and remove all blood.

  2. Place the hare in a stew pan with the sweet herbs, shallots, cloves, allspice, black pepper, port wine, and enough broth to cover it.

  3. Cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.

Separate and stew

  1. Remove the prime parts (back, legs, blade bones) with some gravy and set aside to cool.

  2. Continue to stew the ribs, long bones, neck, and head until the gravy is rich and reduced.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare stuffing with the hare's liver and brains, seasoning with pepper, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Line a pie dish with the crust, add the meat, stuffing, and gravy, then cover with more crust.

  3. Bake until the crust is golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain and thicken the remaining gravy, adding half the juice of a lemon and 1-2 tablespoons of port wine.

  2. Pour the hot gravy into the pie before serving.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and flavourful through long, slow stewing.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity sweetness to the gravy as it reduces.
Shallots
Build a mild, savoury sweetness into the broth that flavours the gravy.
Hare liver and brains
Enrich the stuffing with richness and a soft, creamy body.
Pie crust
Encloses the meat and gravy and browns in the oven to form a golden shell.

The step that matters

Stew the ribs, long bones, neck, and head until the gravy is rich and reduced. Collagen from bones and connective tissue slowly breaks down into gelatin, which gives the gravy body and a glossy, lightly sticky texture. Cooking too briefly leaves it thin, while reducing too hard can make it overly salty and intense.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, port wine, liver):

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, port wine, liver. 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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