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Sauce for Hare

A sauce made with butter, flour, gravy, red wine, and sugar, suitable for hare.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce for Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until the mixture thickens.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove the hare.

  2. Pour the sauce into a dish.

Alternative sauces

  1. Combine the gravy with the butter and flour mixture for an alternative sauce.

  2. Simmer the red wine and sugar in a saucepan for 15 minutes for a sweet sauce.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + red winetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with heat and liquid.
Gravy
Supplies the savoury liquid and body for the alternative sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sweet sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the red wine sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until the mixture thickens. Flour needs to be fully blended into the melted butter over low heat so its starch is evenly coated. This lets the starch swell smoothly when liquid is added, preventing lumps and giving an even, thickened sauce.

“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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