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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare and beef simmered in a jar with Port wine and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin, clean, and wash the hare, then cut it into pieces.

  2. Dredge the hare pieces in flour and fry them in hot butter.

  3. Prepare 1.5 pints of gravy from the beef, thickened with 1 tablespoon of flour.

Stew

  1. Place the fried hare, onion stuck with cloves, halved lemon, and seasonings in a jar.

  2. Pour the gravy over the ingredients in the jar and cover it tightly.

  3. Submerge the jar in boiling water and let it stew until the hare is tender.

  4. When nearly done, pour in the Port wine and add a few fried forcemeat balls.

Serve

  1. Serve with currant jelly.

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

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Beef
Builds the body of the gravy that the hare is stewed in.
Butter
Fries the floured hare pieces, browning the surface and adding richness.
Flour
Coats the hare for browning and thickens the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour when stirred in near the end.

The step that matters

Stewing the sealed jar in boiling water. The jar must be covered tightly and kept gently simmering until the hare is tender. Connective tissue in the meat breaks down slowly with long, moist heat, so stopping early leaves it tough.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, port wine, onion, clove, pepper, flour):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, port wine, onion, clove, pepper, flour. 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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