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A Hare

A stew of hare, bacon, herbs, and wine, simmered with vegetables and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare and marinate

  1. Remove the shoulders and legs from the hare.

  2. Cut the back into three pieces.

  3. Combine the hare pieces with bay leaf, shallots, onion, and vinegar in a deep dish.

  4. Marinate for 24 hours.

Make the gravy

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

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

  3. Simmer in water until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the marinated hare pieces.

  2. Stew until fully cooked.

  3. Brown optional onions.

  4. Stew them in part of the gravy.

  5. Serve them around the hare.

  6. Remove the meat from the bones.

  7. Combine with gravy, red wine, and water to make soup.

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
The main meat; long, gentle stewing softens its firm fibres until tender.
Vinegar
Its acidity in the marinade helps loosen and soften the meat's surface.
Bacon
Renders fat and salty, smoky flavour into the stew base.
Butter
Browns the offal, building colour and savoury, roasted flavour in the gravy.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aroma to the marinade and the finished gravy.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the final soup-like sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the offal in butter. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs a hot pan and space around the pieces. Crowding or overheating them makes the meat steam and go grey, leaving the gravy pale and less savoury.

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, carrot, allspice, butter, 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, carrot, allspice, butter, 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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