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Hare Pie

A pie made with hare, stock, port wine, cloves, pepper, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

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. Wash the hare well and soak it in cold water for some time.

  2. Dry the hare and season it with pounded cloves, black pepper, and Jamaica pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the hare in a dish and add brown stock and port wine.

  2. Cover the dish with puff pastry and bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Port wine + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, moist baking.
Rich brown stock
Adds moisture and savory depth that keeps the meat from drying out.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden crust that browns in the oven and seals the dish.

The step that matters

Covering the dish with pastry before baking. The pastry seals in steam and liquid so the hare cooks gently in its own juices. If the seal is loose or torn, the liquid evaporates and the meat can dry out during the one-hour bake.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, pepper):

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, pepper. 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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