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To Hash a Hare

A stew of hare with gravy, red wine, lemon peel, herbs, force-meat balls, egg yolks, truffles, morels, garnished with lemon and barberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and truffle work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 527 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Hash a Hare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the cut hare in a stew-pan with gravy, red wine, lemon peel, and sweet herbs, then let it stew for 1 hour.

  2. Add force-meat balls and the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, along with truffles and morels.

  3. Bring to a boil, then remove the herbs.

  4. Arrange the hare on a dish, pour the gravy over it, and garnish with sliced lemon and barberries.

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. Meat + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Egg + truffletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,604 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Red wine + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Red wine + truffletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in the gravy.
Good gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury depth that keeps the meat from drying out as it stews.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour that helps balance the rich meat and gravy.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the finished dish.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma that flavours the dish.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then remove the herbs. Boiling after the additions must be brief and controlled, because the egg yolks and delicate mushrooms can toughen or break down with prolonged rough heat. Removing the herbs at this point stops them from over-flavouring the gravy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, meat, egg, truffle):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, meat, egg, truffle. 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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