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Roast Hake

A hare roasted, then simmered in stock with onion, lemon peel, pepper, and optional port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Hake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Remove the entrails and liver from the hare and wipe the inside.

  2. Season the inside with pepper and hang the hare.

  3. Skin and truss the hare for roasting, then half-roast it for 30 to 60 minutes over a hot fire.

  4. Baste the hare constantly while roasting.

Make the stew

  1. Cut the hare into small pieces and place them in an earthen jar.

  2. Pour enough stock over the pieces to nearly cover them, then add onion, lemon peel, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the jar in a slow oven and simmer for 2.5 to 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the hare pieces and pour the gravy into a clean saucepan, adding more stock if needed and the port wine.

  2. Season the gravy with additional pepper and salt if necessary, then heat until just boiling.

  3. Pour the gravy over the hare pieces in a hot dish and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,804 recipes

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

  5. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, moist cooking.
Stock
Provides liquid for slow simmering, keeping the meat moist and forming the base of the gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth and mild sweetness to the gravy as it is heated.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Half-roasting before the slow simmer. Basting during the short roast helps the surface brown and seal in juices, while the long, gentle simmer later breaks down connective tissue in the tough meat without drying it out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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