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Roast Hare

Roast Hare is a stuffed hare roasted with bacon, milk, and served with gravy, port, forcemeat balls, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and red currant work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 193 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the hare

  1. Wipe the inside of the hare thoroughly with a damp cloth.

  2. Remove the eyes, and carefully skin the ears and tail.

  3. Cut off the feet at the first joint and cut the sinews under the second joint.

  4. Fill the body with veal forcemeat and sew it up.

  5. Truss the hare in a sitting position by pulling the shoulders back and the legs forward.

  6. Pass a skewer through the leg and shoulder, through the center of the body, and out the other side.

  7. Fasten the head with a skewer between the shoulders.

Roast and serve

  1. Place a piece of fat bacon over the back of the hare and baste it well with milk.

  2. Roast the hare at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 1½ hours.

  3. Make 1 pint of good brown gravy and add ⅓ cup of port.

  4. Garnish with small fried forcemeat balls and serve with red currant jelly.

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 + red curranttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Veal + milktop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Veal + red curranttop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27 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
Is the main meat, which becomes tender and browned as it roasts.
Veal forcemeat
Fills the body, staying moist and firm while the hare roasts.
Fat bacon
Lies over the back, releasing fat that keeps the meat moist and browned.
Port
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the brown gravy.

The step that matters

Basting with milk over the roast. Milk and the bacon fat help the surface brown evenly and keep the lean hare from drying out during the long roast.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk. 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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