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Jugged Rabbit or Hare

A stew of rabbit or hare joints in gravy thickened with arrowroot, flavored with burnt sugar, sherry, and red currant jelly, served with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jugged Rabbit or Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the rabbit

  1. Stew the rabbit or hare joints with brown gravy or water, onion, and pepper for 1 hour in a pot.

  2. Remove the onion and joints, then brown the gravy with burnt sugar.

Finish the gravy

  1. Add sherry or port wine and dissolved red currant jelly to the gravy.

  2. Slightly thicken the gravy with arrowroot.

Add forcemeat and serve

  1. Prepare forcemeat balls from the liver, bread crumbs, suet, fine herbs, and seasoning.

  2. Boil the forcemeat balls in the gravy for 1 minute.

  3. Serve the gravy and forcemeat balls around the joints in a hot dish.

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. Red currant + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit or hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Brown gravy
Forms the liquid base of the stew and carries the flavour of the dish.
Burnt sugar
Adds deep brown colour and a slightly bitter, caramel flavour to the gravy.
Sherry or port wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the gravy.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the gravy.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy to a smooth, glossy consistency.

The step that matters

Boiling the forcemeat balls. Boiling for only 1 minute is enough to cook the forcemeat through while keeping it tender. Longer boiling can make the balls tough or cause them to break apart in the gravy.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, pepper, sugar, sherry, arrowroot, liver):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, pepper, sugar, sherry, arrowroot, liver. 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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