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Hare Cake

A savory meat cake made from diced hare, mutton, ham, bacon, and egg yolks, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and ham work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 430 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Hare Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mix the diced hares, mutton, and ham in a bowl.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and fine spice.

  3. Line a mold with sheets of bacon, overlapping them.

  4. Combine the meat mixture with the egg yolks to bind it.

  5. Fill the mold with the mixture and cover with bacon.

Bake and chill

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours or longer.

  2. Cool in the mold overnight before serving.

Serve

  1. To serve, dip the mold in warm water for a few minutes to release the cake.

  2. Remove the bacon and garnish with chopped aspic.

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. Mutton + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  3. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  4. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,648 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hares
Provide the main meat and body of the cake's filling.
Mutton
Adds meaty substance and richness to the filling.
Ham
Contributes savory, salty flavor to the meat mixture.
Egg yolks
Bind the diced meats together so the cake holds its shape when sliced.
Bacon
Lines and covers the mold, adding fat and savory flavor to the cake's exterior.

The step that matters

Cool in the mold overnight before serving. Cooling fully lets the egg yolks and meat juices set and firm, so the cake holds its shape when unmolded and sliced.

“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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