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Soup

Artificial Hare Soup

A soup made by stewing a bullock's heart with onions, mace, herbs, and spices, then puréeing and thickening with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Artificial Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Procure a bullock's heart and remove the fat, pipes, and outer skin.

  2. Slice the heart and place it in a covered earthen jar.

  3. Add onions (one stuck with cloves), mace, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, bread, and butter.

  4. Cover the ingredients with water and seal the jar with a paste to prevent steam from escaping.

  5. Place the jar in a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water nearly reaches the top of the jar.

Stew and strain

  1. Stew for several hours, adding boiling water as needed.

  2. Once the meat is tender, pound it with the bread in a mortar, adding broth to moisten.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve and combine with the stewing gravy and enough beef broth to achieve desired soup quantity.

Finish the soup

  1. Bring to a boil and adjust seasoning with cayenne and salt.

  2. If too thin, add flour and butter until it reaches a creamy consistency.

  3. Stir in sugar and port wine for added flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Bullock's heart
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful through long, gentle stewing.
Bread
Pounded with the meat to thicken and give the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup to a creamy consistency when added with butter.
Onions
Build savory depth and sweetness as they stew in the gravy.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar and keeping the water bath going. A tight paste seal traps steam so the meat stews in its own moisture rather than drying out. Topping up boiling water keeps the heat steady over the long stew, so the meat becomes tender without tightening or drying.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, bread, butter, flour, sugar. 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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