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Hare Pie

A savory pie made with hare, herbs, shallots, spices, and a rich port wine gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hare Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Clean the hare thoroughly and remove all blood.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine the hare, sweet herbs, shallots, cloves, allspice, black pepper, port wine, and enough broth to cover the hare.

  3. Cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Remove the prime parts (back, legs, blade bones) with some gravy and set aside to cool.

  5. Continue to simmer the remaining parts until the gravy is rich and reduced.

Make the stuffing

  1. Prepare stuffing with the hare's liver and brains, seasoning with pepper, salt, and cayenne.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the crust, add the meat, stuffing, and gravy, then cover with more crust.

  2. Bake until the crust is golden brown.

  3. Strain and thicken the remaining gravy, adding lemon juice and port wine, and pour it into the pie while hot.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Shallots
Add savory aromatic flavor that deepens into the broth and gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the gravy as it reduces.
Pie crust
Forms a sealed case that holds the meat and gravy while baking to golden brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the remaining parts until the gravy is rich and reduced. Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue and concentrates the liquid. Stopping early leaves a thin gravy, while boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, clove, allspice, pepper, port wine, liver. 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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