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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare pieces cooked with bacon, onion, stock, and spices, then sealed in a jar and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin and wash the hare thoroughly, then dry it and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Melt the dripping in a stewpan.

  3. Add the hare, bacon, and onion, and fry until browned.

  4. Drain the meat on paper and place it in a jar or gourmet boiler.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour and cornflour into the pan with the fat, and cook for a few minutes.

  2. Gradually add the stock, letting it boil and thicken.

  3. Season with salt, spices, pepper, celery seed, thyme, parsley, lemon juice, and browning sauce, then simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce over the meat in the jar.

Cook and serve

  1. Seal the jar with a dough made of flour and water.

  2. Place the sealed jar in a pan of boiling water in a 350°F (175°C) oven, and cook for 3 hours.

  3. Arrange the meat on a hot dish.

  4. Strain the sauce over it.

  5. Garnish with herb forcemeat balls and 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 long, slow cooking in liquid.
Dripping
Fat for frying the meat and onion, carrying flavour into the dish and helping browning.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the cornflour as it cooks in the fat and stock.
Cornflour
Adds thickening power to the sauce, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Stock
Makes the cooking liquid for the sauce, made from hare trimmings for a meaty flavour.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that flavours the meat and the sauce.

The step that matters

Sealing and slow cooking in the jar. The sealed jar traps moisture and cooks the meat gently in a water bath, so the hare stays tender and juicy rather than drying out. If the seal leaks or the water boils too hard, the sauce can reduce or the meat can toughen.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, celery, thyme, parsley, lemon, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, celery, thyme, parsley, lemon, sauce. 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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