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Hare, Roasted

Roasted hare stuffed with breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, spices, lemon peel, egg, milk, ketchup, and liver, then baked with butter or dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hare, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and wash the hare in 2-3 waters, then dry it with a clean cloth.

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, suet, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon peel, egg, milk, ketchup, and chopped liver.

  3. Stuff the hare with the mixture and sew it closed.

Roast and serve

  1. Hang the hare to roast head downward, basting with butter or dripping occasionally.

  2. Roast for about 2 hours, serving it back upwards with beef gravy and currant jelly.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body so it holds together while roasting.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing and meat moist and rich in flavour.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it sets into a cohesive mass when cooked.
Hare liver
Contributes a deep, rich meaty flavour to the stuffing.
Butter or dripping
Fat for basting that promotes browning and keeps the surface from drying out.

The step that matters

Hang the hare to roast head downward. Hanging lets heat and fat drip and circulate around the whole carcass, so it cooks evenly; basting keeps the surface moist while it browns.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, beef, parsley, pepper, lemon, egg, milk):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, parsley, pepper, lemon, egg, milk. 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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