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Hare En Daube

A slow-cooked hare dish with bacon, herbs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hare En Daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Divide the hare in half.

  2. Lard the hare thickly with bacon.

Assemble and stew

  1. Place slices of bacon in the bottom of a stew pan.

  2. Layer the hare slices on top of the bacon.

  3. Add the parsley bundle, thyme, bay leaves, clove, spices, carrots, onions, calf's feet, and breast of bacon.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Moisten with broth and white wine.

  6. Cover with buttered paper to prevent drying.

  7. Seal the pan.

  8. Stew gently for 3 hours.

Finish the liquid

  1. Remove from heat.

  2. Drain the hare.

  3. Skim the liquid.

  4. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

  5. Let it cool.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, gentle stew.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavour that bastes the meat and enriches the sauce as it renders.
Calf's feet
Release gelatin into the liquid, giving the finished sauce body and a silky texture.
White onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the braising liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat and brightens the flavour of the sauce.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during slow cooking, adding sweetness that balances the meat.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 3 hours. Gentle, low heat lets connective tissue break down slowly into gelatin, making the meat tender and the liquid rich. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the sauce cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, thyme, clove, carrot, white wine):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, thyme, clove, carrot, white 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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