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Jugged Hare of Cold Mutton

A preserved mutton dish seasoned with spices, boiled in a jar with porter, served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Jugged Hare of Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the mutton pieces with pepper, salt, allspice, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Place the seasoned mutton in a jar with the onion, cloves, sweet herbs, beef, and porter.

  3. Seal the jar tightly with a bladder or strong paper.

Cook in water bath

  1. Submerge the jar in a saucepan of water up to the neck, but no higher.

  2. Boil the water for five hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Before serving, heat the gravy with butter and flour until thickened.

  2. If the meat cools, warm it in the gravy without boiling.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in the sealed jar.
Porter
Adds liquid and a malty, slightly bitter flavour to the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it is heated with the butter.

The step that matters

Warming the meat without boiling. Boiling the gravy again after the long cook can toughen the meat and cause the thickened sauce to break or turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the meat moist and the gravy smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, allspice, mace, nutmeg, clove, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, allspice, mace, nutmeg, clove, thyme. 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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