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Hare Soup

A vegetable soup thickened with brown roux, flavored with herbs, port wine, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the carrot, celery, onion, and turnip.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the chopped vegetables in 1 quart of water until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. Thicken the soup with brown roux until it reaches a creamy consistency.

Finish

  1. Stir in the aromatic herbs, cayenne pepper, port wine, red-currant jelly, and lemon juice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown roux
Thickens the soup into a creamy body as its starch swells in the liquid.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity depth that balances the savoury vegetables.
Port wine
Adds richness and aromatic depth to the soup's flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy flavours.
Onion
Provides savoury aromatic base flavour as it cooks down in the water.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with brown roux. Roux thickens only when its starch is fully mixed in and the soup is kept at a simmer. Adding it to a boiling or lumpy liquid can cause clumps and uneven texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, onion, turnip, port wine, lemon, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, onion, turnip, port wine, lemon, pepper. 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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