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Stewed Hare

A stew of hare, ham or bacon, butter, gravy, lemon rind, rice flour, mushroom catsup, mace, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Wash and soak the hare thoroughly, then wipe it dry and cut it into joints.

  2. Flour the hare and brown it slightly in butter with bits of lean ham.

Stew

  1. Gradually pour in 1½ pints of gravy and stew the hare gently for 1½ to 2 hours.

  2. When the hare is about one third done, add the thin rind of half a large lemon.

  3. Ten minutes before serving, stir in 1 large dessert spoon of rice flour mixed with 2 tablespoons of mushroom catsup, ¼ teaspoon of mace, and a little cayenne.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt if needed.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 through long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Browns the flour-dusted hare, adding color and a rich, toasty flavor.
Rice flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce when stirred in near the end.
Lean ham or bacon
Adds savory, salty depth to the browned meat and the stewing liquid.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the rich, slow-cooked gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour mixture ten minutes before serving. Starch thickens when heated but can clump if added to liquid unevenly. Mixing it with catsup first and stirring it in near the end gives a smooth sauce without overcooking it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, lemon, rice, flour, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, lemon, rice, flour, mushroom. 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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