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Hare or Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made with hare or rabbit, onions, spices, and blood, thickened with meat and served with force‑meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Hare or Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and blood

  1. Cut and wash the hare or rabbits.

  2. Save all the blood and strain it through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a soup pot, combine the meat, onions, cloves, mace, celery, parsley, marjoram, basil, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Pour in 3 quarts of water.

  3. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  4. Add the strained blood.

  5. Simmer for another hour without boiling.

  6. Strain the soup.

  7. Pound half the meat.

  8. Stir the pounded meat into the soup to thicken.

  9. Cut the remaining meat into small pieces and add the pieces to the soup.

  10. Stir in the red wine and currant jelly.

  11. Simmer for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen.

  2. Optionally add small force-meat balls.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare or rabbits
Provides the meat that flavours the broth and is partly pounded to thicken it.
Blood (in the method)
Thickens the soup and gives it a richer, darker body as it heats.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth that balances the rich meat broth.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy body that rounds out the savoury flavour.
Celery
Contributes aromatic savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Add the strained blood without boiling. Blood proteins coagulate and can curdle or turn grainy if the soup boils, so it should only simmer gently once the blood is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, clove, celery, parsley, marjoram, basil):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, clove, celery, parsley, marjoram, basil. 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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