Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Hare

A hearty stew of hare, mutton, beef, veal, and ham, thickened with flour and butter, finished with port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine 5 quarts of water, scrag of mutton, gravy beef, shank of veal, and ham in a large pot. Add turnips, carrots, onions, mace, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture for 3 to 4 hours, then strain the soup.

Cook the hare

  1. Season the hare pieces with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel. Place them in a stone jar and fill it with the prepared soup.

  2. Seal the jar with a bung, cover it with a bladder and linen, and place it in a pot of cold water.

  3. As the water evaporates, refill with boiling water and let it boil for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, remove the fat and discard the lemon peel.

  2. Thicken the soup with a tablespoon of flour kneaded with a small bit of butter and add ½ pint of port wine for each dish.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

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 flavour and, after long gentle cooking, tender pieces in the stew.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body so it coats the meat.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Scrag of mutton
Releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the stock during long stewing.
Gravy beef
Adds rich beefy flavour and body to the stock.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and savoury aroma to the stock as they cook down.

The step that matters

Keeping the jar at a gentle boil in the water bath. If the outer water is allowed to run dry, the jar overheats or cools unevenly and the hare can toughen or spoil. Topping up with boiling water keeps the heat steady and the contents cooking gently.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnip, carrot, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnip, carrot, 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipes