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Hare or Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made from hare or rabbit, onions, celery, cloves, wine, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hare or Rabbit Soup

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. Clean the hare or rabbit thoroughly in salt and water, then cut into very small pieces.

Bake

  1. Place the meat in a covered crock with the onion pierced with cloves, finely chopped celery, and enough water to cover the ingredients.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until the meat slips from the bones, adding more water as needed.

  3. Strain the contents and return the soup to the crock.

  4. Add the port or native wine, flour to thicken, and pepper and salt to taste.

  5. Return to the oven until it is ready to boil.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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 or rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavours the broth as it slowly cooks.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body as it is combined with the cooking liquid.
Port or native wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavour to the broth during slow baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, wine, flour, pepper, clove, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, wine, flour, pepper, clove, celery. 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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