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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with hare, bacon, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the flour and bacon, stirring until lightly browned.

  3. Add the hare pieces and stir until set.

Simmer the soup

  1. Pour in the water and add onions, celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, mace, and cloves.

  2. Bring to a boil, then season with salt and pepper.

  3. Simmer until the hare is tender, about 1 hour for a young hare, longer for an older one.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the best pieces of hare and pound the remaining meat in a mortar.

  2. Remove the bones and return the pounded meat to the soup.

  3. Pass the soup through a tammy and return it to the stewpan.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and bacon fat.
Butter
Carries the flour and bacon, forming the base for the thickening roux.
Hare
Provides the main meat, which turns tender and flavourful during slow simmering.
Streaked bacon
Adds savoury fat and browned flavour to the base.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and bacon until lightly browned. Cooking the flour in fat develops a nutty flavour and removes raw starch taste, while stopping at light browning keeps the thickening power intact. Burnt flour turns bitter and darkens the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, celery, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, celery, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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