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To Roast Hare

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Skin the hare and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Soak the hare in water for 1-2 hours.

  3. If the hare is old, lard it to make it tender or soak it in vinegar, then wash it well in water.

  4. Stuff the belly with a rich stuffing and sew it up.

  5. Baste with milk until half-cooked, then switch to butter.

  6. If blood settles in the neck, soak it in warm water and warm it by the fire, nicking the skin to release the blood.

  7. Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially.

  8. Serve with froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and currant-jelly sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, milk, butter, liver, anchovy, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, milk, butter, liver, anchovy, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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