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To Pot Hare

A hare cooked slowly in butter, then ground into a paste and served in potting pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pot Hare

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut off the legs, chine, and shoulders of the hare.

  2. Rub the pieces with cloves, pepper, mace, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Place the pieces in a pan that fits snugly, with the bony part on top.

  4. Add 1 pound of butter on top.

  5. Cover the pan with brown paper.

Bake and rest

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Pour off the gravy.

  3. Let the gravy cool.

Make the potted hare

  1. Pick the meat off the bones.

  2. Chop the meat.

  3. Pound the chopped meat in a mortar with the gravy butter.

  4. Add more seasoning if needed.

  5. Beat to a fine paste.

  6. Pack the paste into potting-pots.

  7. Press down.

  8. Pour clarified butter over it.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the meat that becomes the main body of the potted paste.
Butter
Slow-cooks the meat in fat and, once cooled, gives the paste its moisture and rich texture.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealing layer on top that keeps air out of the potted meat.

The step that matters

Beat to a fine paste. Pounding the chopped meat with the gravy butter breaks its fibres into a smooth, spreadable texture. Stopping early leaves a coarse paste that is less even when set.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, butter. 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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