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Jugged Hare

A preserved hare cooked in a sealed jar with herbs, lemon, onion, and wine, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and currant work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the hare pieces thoroughly and place them in a jugging pot or stone jar.

  2. Add sweet herbs, lemon rind, and the studded onion.

  3. Pour in water or wine and lemon juice, depending on your preference.

  4. Seal the jar tightly with a bladder to prevent steam from escaping.

Cook

  1. Place the jar in a saucepan with hay at the bottom and fill with water.

  2. Boil for about 3 hours, ensuring the water remains boiling and topping it up as needed.

  3. Once tender, strain the gravy from the fat and thicken it with flour, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve the hare in a soup dish and pour the gravy over it.

  2. Optionally, make a pudding or force meatballs from the hare for garnish.

  3. Serve with 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. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Clove + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle cooking.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty flavor.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling during the long cook. Long, steady boiling keeps the sealed jar hot enough to slowly break down the tough connective tissue in the hare. If the water drops and stops boiling, the meat cooks unevenly and stays tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, clove, port wine, flour, currant):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, port wine, flour, currant. 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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