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Hare, Roast

A roasted hare stuffed with a recipe-based stuffing, wrapped in bacon, and served with brown sauce and hot currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hare, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and gut the hare, then wash it in warm water followed by cold water.

  2. Stuff the hare with the stuffing.

  3. Cover the hare with fat bacon and truss it.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the hare for 1 to 1.5 hours, or the leveret for 45 minutes, basting frequently with butter, cream, or new milk.

  2. Serve with brown sauce and hot currant jelly on the side.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Cream + curranttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 or leveret
Provides the meat that is roasted and served as the main dish.
Fat bacon
Covers the lean meat, adding fat that bastes it and keeps it moist while roasting.
Butter
Used for basting, adding richness and helping the surface brown during roasting.
Cream or new milk
Used for basting, adding fat and milk solids that help the surface brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Roast the hare for the right time. Hare is very lean, so overcooking dries it out quickly. Basting frequently keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, while the time differs between a hare and a leveret.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sauce. 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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