Name: Hare Pie
Ingredients: 1 hare, cut into small joints; 2 cloves, pounded; black pepper, to taste; Jamaica pepper, to taste; ½ pint brown stock; ⅓ cup port wine; puff pastry (made with lard or dripping for a hot dish)

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 ↓

Hare Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the hare joints thoroughly and soak them in cold water for some time.
Dry the hare and season it with pounded cloves, black pepper, and Jamaica pepper.
Place the seasoned hare in a dish and add brown stock and port wine.
Cover the dish with puff pastry.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together914 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Pepper + port winetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,804 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).