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Old Hare Soup

A soup made with hare or rabbit, mutton bones, bacon, onion, parsley, seasoned with pepper, salt, and mushroom ketchup, served with sliced boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Old Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the hare carefully and cut it into pieces, cracking all the bones.

  2. Put the hare, mutton bones, bacon, onion, and parsley into a soup kettle.

  3. Pour in 3 quarts of cold water and cover tightly.

Stew and strain

  1. Stew very slowly for 4 hours until the meat is in shreds.

  2. Strain the soup, return it to the fire, season, and skim for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the sliced boiled eggs in a tureen and pour the soup over them.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare or rabbit
Provides the meat, which breaks down into shreds during the long slow stew.
Mutton bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water, giving the soup body and depth.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Corned ham or salt pork
Contributes salty, smoky fat that seasons the broth and adds richness.
Boiled eggs
Add soft, mild richness and body when floated in the hot soup.

The step that matters

Stew very slowly for 4 hours. A gentle, low simmer lets collagen in the bones and meat break down slowly into gelatin, giving body and tender shreds. A rolling boil would toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, mutton, ham, parsley, pepper, mushroom, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, mutton, ham, parsley, pepper, mushroom, egg. 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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