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Jugged Rabbit or Hare

A stew of rabbit or hare joints in brown gravy with burnt sugar, sherry, and red currant jelly, finished 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. In a pot, stew the rabbit or hare joints with brown gravy or water, onion, and pepper for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the onion and joints from the pot.

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the gravy with burnt sugar, then add sherry or port wine.

  2. Dissolve red currant jelly in the gravy and slightly thicken with arrowroot.

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

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

Serve

  1. Pour 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 meat that becomes tender during long, slow stewing.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy into a glossy sauce without making it cloudy.
Burnt sugar
Adds color and a deeper, slightly bitter caramel flavor to the gravy.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity tartness that balances the rich gravy.
Sherry or port wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Liver
Gives the forcemeat balls a rich, savory body and firm texture.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be added to a gently simmering, not boiling, liquid and mixed smooth first. Overheating or lumps leave a cloudy or grainy sauce, and starch thickens only once heated, so it needs a brief simmer to set properly.

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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