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Hare Pie

A savory pie made with hare, bacon, onions, wine, bread crumbs, and spices, baked with a forcemeat filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 406 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Hare Pie

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 the hare

  1. Season the hare pieces with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and mace.

  2. Place the hare in a jug with the butter and seal the jug.

  3. Set the jug in boiling water.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing bacon, onions, red wine, bread crumbs, winter savory, hare liver, nutmeg, and egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Raise the pie crust.

  2. Place the forcemeat at the bottom of the dish.

  3. Add the hare and its juices.

  4. Cover with the lid.

  5. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Nutmeg + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + winter savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main meat of the pie, cooking into tender pieces that flavour the dish.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the meat and helps keep it moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and give the forcemeat body so it holds together.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and set as it cooks, holding its texture together.
Bacon
Contributes fat and savoury flavour to the forcemeat.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften within the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Set the jug in boiling water. The sealed jug traps steam and juices so the hare cooks gently in its own moisture. If the jug is unsealed or the water boils dry, the meat can dry out and toughen.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, onion, red wine, bread, winter savory):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, onion, red wine, bread, winter savory. 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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