Why it works: Currant and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓
Modern Cookery
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare double the usual quantity of forcemeat.
Restore the legs of the hare to their original shape.
Line the body with delicate slices of trimmed bacon.
Sew up the hare and truss it as usual.
Roast and serve
Lard the hare if convenient and baste it with butter while roasting.
Serve with a sauce made from melted currant jelly in brown gravy.
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.
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Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,856 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hare
- The main meat, which is roasted whole and carved for serving.
- Bacon
- Lines the lean meat, and its fat renders to help keep it moist while roasting.
- Butter
- Basting with melted butter adds richness and helps the surface brown.
- Currant jelly
- Melts into the gravy to add sweetness and a glossy, tart-sweet flavour to the sauce.
- Brown gravy
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the melted jelly is stirred into.
The step that matters
Lining the body with bacon. Lean game meat dries out easily in the oven. Thin bacon slices protect the surface, and their fat renders slowly into the meat, so the slices should cover the body fully and stay intact.
“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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