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Hare, Roasted

A roasted hare seasoned with bacon, butter, stock, and herbs, served with a liver sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hare, Roasted

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Choose a young hare with smooth claws and a narrow cleft in the lip. Hang it for about 8 days for best flavor.

  2. Skin, draw, and truss the hare as per instructions for poultry and game.

  3. If using forcemeat, press it lightly inside the hare and sew the body closed before trussing.

  4. Brush the hare with warm butter or dripping, cover the back with bacon slices, and tie it down with string in 3 or 4 places.

Roast

  1. Roast the hare in front of a clear fire or in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1½ to 2 hours, basting frequently with milk and additional butter if desired.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the gallbladder from the liver, place the liver in cold water, bring to a boil, cook for 5 minutes, then drain and chop finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, add the liver, onion, parsley, and thyme, and fry for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the mixture, return the butter to the saucepan, stir in the flour, and cook over the fire.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Is the main meat; lean flesh that browns and firms as it roasts.
Bacon
Covers the back with fat that bastes the lean meat and keeps it moist while roasting.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown, and forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with starch as it cooks in the melted butter.
Port
Adds sweetness and acidity, deepening the flavor of the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries flavor and thins the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. If the flour is not cooked long enough, it keeps a raw, pasty taste. Cooking it in the fat lets the starch swell and thicken smoothly while the flavor develops.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, shallot, parsley, thyme, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, shallot, parsley, thyme, 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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