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Hare Soup

A stew made from hare, water, root vegetables, onions, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 soup

  1. Preserve the blood of the hare and warm it with the joints.

  2. Add cold water, turnip, carrot, celery, and potatoes.

  3. Stew slowly for 3 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove from heat and cut the best meat from the bones.

  2. Strain the soup, returning the hare pieces to the pot.

  3. Add onions, flour, and butter, then heat again.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat and rich, gamey flavour to the broth.
Potatoes
Break down during stewing to thicken the soup and add body.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavour of the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for 3 hours. Gentle, slow heat lets the connective tissue in the hare break down so the meat turns tender and the broth becomes rich. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, potato, flour, butter. 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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