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Fillets of Hare Larded with a Puree of Hare

Fillets of hare served on a puree made from hare, ham, herbs, spices, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fillets of Hare Larded with a Puree of Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut the hare fillets neatly and lard them.

Make the puree

  1. In a stewpan, combine the remaining hare, ham, shallot, garlic, sweet herbs, mace, cloves, red wine, and stock.

  2. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  3. Strain off the gravy and pick the meat off the bones and ham.

  4. Add the gravy back to the meat and rub it through a fine sieve.

  5. Keep the puree hot until serving.

Cook and serve

  1. Stew the fillets in stock with a glass of wine and seasoning.

  2. Serve the fillets on the puree.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillets of hare
Forms the main meat of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the stewed puree.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stewing liquid.
Stock
Provides moisture and body for stewing the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Rubbing the puree through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked meat through a fine sieve breaks down fibres and yields a smooth, even texture. Skipping this or using a coarse sieve leaves the puree grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, shallot, clove, garlic, red wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, shallot, clove, garlic, red 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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