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Hare Soup

A stew made with hare, butter, carrot, onion, celery, port wine, salt, bay leaves, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 hare

  1. Skin and wash the hare.

  2. Remove the legs and shoulders, cutting them into four pieces, and the back into six pieces. Divide the head.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped carrot, onions, and celery, frying until light brown.

  3. Add the hare pieces to the pan and fry until browned.

  4. Dust with flour and stir to coat.

  5. Pour in the port wine and add salt and bay leaves.

  6. Simmer until the hare is tender.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main body of the soup and becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Dusted over the browned meat to coat it and thicken the cooking liquid.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the braising liquid as it simmers with the meat.
Butter
Carries the vegetables and meat in the pan, adding richness and aiding browning.

The step that matters

Frying the hare until browned. Browning the meat over medium heat creates deep, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the liquid gives a flatter, less savoury soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, celery, port wine, 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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