Name: Roast Hare or Rabbit
Ingredients: 1 hare or rabbit; Vinegar (for cleaning); Butter (for basting); Flour (for dredging); Force-meat filling; Red currant jelly (for serving)

Why it works: Rabbit and meat work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 315 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Roast Hare or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Skin the hare or rabbit and wash it well in cold water.
Rinse thoroughly in lukewarm water.
If musty, rub the insides with vinegar, then wash again in lukewarm water.
Wipe the animal with a soft cloth.
Fill with force-meat, sew it up, and truss it.
Roast in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 45 minutes, basting constantly with butter and dredging with flour.
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.

Rabbit + meattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together315 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Vinegar + red curranttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together188 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,448 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, vinegar, butter, flour, meat):

Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonfits better
Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, vinegar, butter, flour, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.