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Hare Pie

A savory pie made with hare, herbs, and Port wine, baked with a crust and served with a wine‑lemon gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut the hare into pieces and parboil for 2 minutes to cleanse it.

  2. Wash the hare well and place it in a stew pot with shallots, Port wine, thyme, savory, marjoram, parsley, cloves, and allspice.

  3. Cover with veal broth and stew until half cooked.

  4. Remove the prime pieces like the back and legs, leaving the rest to stew until fully extracted.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill a dish with the preserved pieces and some water, then cover with pie crust.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

  3. Optionally, line the bottom of the dish with hare stuffing or make forcemeat balls.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy from the trimmings, thicken it slightly, and add Port wine and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the hot gravy into the pie.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful through long stewing.
Shallots
Add savoury depth and aroma to the stewing liquid as it cooks down.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the stew and the gravy.
Veal broth
Forms the moist cooking liquid that extracts flavour from the hare into the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Remove the prime pieces before the rest finish stewing. Lean, tender cuts such as the back and legs cook faster than the rest and can dry out or fall apart if left in the pot until everything is fully extracted. Removing them at the right moment keeps them moist while the remaining pieces give up their flavour to the broth.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, thyme, marjoram, parsley, clove, allspice, veal):

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Parsnipfits less well
  4. Turnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, thyme, marjoram, parsley, clove, allspice, veal. 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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