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Stewed Hare

A stew made from roast hare pieces simmered with flour, gravy, lime, onion, port wine, ketchup, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Hare

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. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place the hare pieces in a deep fireproof dish.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour with a little water to form a paste.

  4. Add the roast gravy, lime juice, and sliced onion to the paste, then pour over the meat.

Stew

  1. Season with cayenne and coarse sea salt, then gently simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the port wine and ketchup, and add butter if there's no gravy left.

  3. Cover and stew gently for about 45 minutes.

  4. If desired, add small forcemeat balls before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with red currant jelly.

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. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lime + red curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 slow, gentle stewing.
Flour
Mixed with water to form a paste that thickens the stewing liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens into the sauce.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and richness to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds tomato-based sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gentle stewing. Keeping the heat low and the dish covered lets the tough hare meat soften slowly without drying out or toughening. A hard boil would tighten the proteins and make the meat stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, lime, pepper, port wine, ketchup, butter, red currant):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, lime, pepper, port wine, ketchup, butter, red currant. 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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