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A hare stuffed with forcemeat, wrapped in bacon, roasted, and served with a currant jelly and brown gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare forcemeat and restore the hare's legs to their original shape.

  2. Line the body of the hare with bacon slices.

  3. Sew up the hare and truss it as usual.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the hare with butter while roasting.

  2. Serve with a sauce made from melted currant jelly in brown gravy.

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 + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 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
Lean main meat that is roasted whole and carved for serving.
Forcemeat
Fills the cavity and adds moisture and body to the lean meat.
Bacon
Its fat wraps the lean meat, helping keep it moist and flavourful as it cooks.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes even browning and helps keep the surface moist.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and melts smoothly into the sauce.
Brown gravy
Provides the savoury liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Baste the hare with butter while roasting. Hare is very lean, so it dries out easily. Regular basting with melted butter coats the surface, adds fat for moisture, and promotes even golden browning.

“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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