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A Habe

Roasted hare basted with milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a clean dripping pan, combine the milk and butter.

Roast

  1. Baste the hare with the milk and butter mixture continuously while it roasts.

  2. Roast a small hare for 45 minutes, a medium hare for 1 hour, and a large hare for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Cover the breast with paper until nearly done, then remove the paper and froth the top.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms a basting liquid that moistens the hare and browns gently as it reduces in the pan.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and helps the surface brown and turn golden.

The step that matters

Covering the breast with paper. Lean meat dries out quickly under dry oven heat, so covering the breast protects it until nearly done. Removing the paper late lets the top froth and brown.

“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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