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Roast Hares or Rabbits

Roast hare or rabbit stuffed with liver, pork fat, breadcrumbs, and optional mushrooms, then baked and served with a gravy of stock, catsup, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Hares or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Thoroughly skin and clean the hare or rabbit.

  2. Mix the chopped liver, fat pork, bread crumbs, optional mushrooms, pepper, salt, and onion juice.

  3. Stuff the hare or rabbit with the mixture and sew it up.

  4. Anoint the outside with salad oil and lemon juice.

  5. Marinate for 1 hour.

Roast

  1. Place the hare or rabbit in a roaster.

  2. Pour in the stock or butter and water.

  3. Cover and cook for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the cover.

  5. Wash the hare or rabbit with butter.

  6. Brown the outside.

  7. Keep the hare or rabbit hot.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  2. Boil the gravy.

  3. Add catsup and claret.

  4. Pour some over the meat.

  5. Serve the rest separately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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

Hare or rabbit
Is the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during the covered braise.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the juices from the liver and pork, keeping the stuffing moist.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist and adds savoury flavour.
Liver
Contributes rich, deep flavour to the stuffing.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the finished gravy.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 1 hour, then remove the cover. Cooking covered first keeps the lean meat moist in the liquid. Removing the cover lets the outside dry and brown, so the browning step has a surface to work on.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, pork, bread, mushroom, pepper, onion):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, pork, bread, mushroom, pepper, onion. 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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