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Clear Hare Soup

A clear soup made from hare body and blood, simmered with water, peppercorns, onions, thyme, clarified with egg shells onion peels, finished with port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,171 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Clear Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the hare's body and blood in a stew-pan with 3 pints of cold water, peppercorns, and fried onions with thyme.

  2. Boil for the entire day, skimming regularly.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and let it sit overnight.

Clarify and serve

  1. Clarify the soup with egg shells and onion peels.

  2. Add a little port wine before serving.

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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Thyme + port winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Onion + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + port winetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Thyme + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, 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 meaty flavour and body of the soup.
Blood
Helps clarify and thicken the stock as it cooks and is strained.
Egg shells
Their calcium-rich surface attracts particles, helping clarify the stock into a clear soup.

The step that matters

Clarify the soup. Egg shells and onion peels must be stirred in and then left to settle, so the particles bind and rise. Rushing this or stirring again leaves the soup cloudy instead of clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, egg, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, egg, port wine. 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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