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Scotch Hare Soup

A soup made from hare, celery, cabbage, carrot, beans, and seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Scotch Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut one hare into joints.

  2. Boil the hare in enough water for the soup with the celery.

  3. Reserve the blood of the hare.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the reserved pieces of hare in butter.

  2. Add flour to the fried pieces.

  3. Pour in the stock.

  4. Add the cabbage, carrot, and beans to the stock.

  5. Simmer for three hours.

  6. Season with salt and a pinch of cayenne.

  7. Boil for an additional hour.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Hares
Provide the meat that gives the soup its main flavour and body.
Butter
Fat for frying the hare pieces, adding richness and browning flavour.
Flour
Added to the fried pieces to thicken the soup as it cooks.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock while the hare cooks.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and mild sweetness to the soup during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer for three hours. A long, gentle simmer breaks down the tough hare meat and lets its flavour fully develop. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, flour, butter, carrot, beans):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, flour, butter, carrot, beans. 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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