Name: Hare Forcemeat
Ingredients: stale bread-crumbs; ½ cup port or claret; 4 ounces finely shredded veal suet; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind; 1 tablespoon lean raw ham; liver of the hare or any other game or poultry if not available

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hare Forcemeat

Ingredients

stale bread-crumbs
½ cup port or claret
4 ounces finely shredded veal suet
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 tablespoon lean raw ham
liver of the hare or any other game or poultry if not available

Directions

Prepare

Soak stale bread crumbs in port or claret until covered.
In a bowl, mix the soaked bread crumbs with veal suet, parsley, lemon rind, ham, and liver, then combine until well mixed.

Use

Use as a filling for dishes or shape into quenelles and poach.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together392 recipes

Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs: Soak up the port or claret and give the forcemeat body without making it heavy.
Veal suet: Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender as it cooks.
Liver of the hare: Contributes rich, gamey flavour and firmness to the mixture.

“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.