Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Roast Hare
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Remove the bones from the back and thighs of the hare using a sharp knife.
Be careful not to cut through the skin over the spine.
Season the hare with coarse sea salt and pepper.
Rub butter over the hare before roasting.
Roast
Roast in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.
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.
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hare
- The main meat, which is deboned, seasoned and roasted as the centre of the dish.
- Butter
- Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown in the oven.
The step that matters
Be careful not to cut through the skin over the spine. The skin holds the deboned meat together as one piece while it roasts. A cut through it can cause the meat to split and lose juices during cooking.
“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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