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Potted Hare

A preserved hare dish with butter and spices, packed in a jar and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Potted Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the back and tender parts of the hare, avoiding sinewy flesh.

  2. Season the meat with salt, cloves, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Pound the seasoned meat in a mortar until finely minced.

Pot and seal

  1. Pack the minced meat tightly into a jar.

  2. Melt the butter and pour it evenly over the meat.

  3. Add enough water to prevent the mixture from hardening.

  4. Cover the jar tightly with brown paper.

Finish

  1. Let it cool completely before removing the butter layer.

  2. Scrape off any excess butter and mix it back into the meat.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 is pounded into a fine, spreadable texture.
Fresh butter
Forms a sealing layer over the meat and adds richness and moisture.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the meat.

The step that matters

Adding water before sealing. Water keeps the minced meat from hardening as it sets. Too little leaves a dry, firm texture, while the butter layer above seals the jar against air.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, pepper. 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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