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Jugged Hare

A stew of rabbit or hare cooked slowly in stock with onions, pork fat, parsley, paprika, and flavored with currant jelly, lemon juice, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin, clean, and joint the rabbit or hare. Cut the back into two pieces and sever every joint.

  2. Fry the sliced onion in hot dripping until pale brown. Add the meat, seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, and cook for 10 minutes, turning often.

Layer and braise

  1. In an agate-iron saucepan, layer chopped fat salt pork, sprinkle with onion, parsley, and paprika. Place the pieces of hare on top and cover with another layer of chopped pork and onion. Optionally, add bits of fresh tomato.

  2. Pour in the cold weak stock with the boiled celery. Fit on a tight lid and set in a vessel of cold water. Bring slowly to a boil. Maintain a gentle boil for 3 hours or until the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and thicken the gravy with browned flour. Stir in currant jelly and lemon juice, simmer for 1 minute. Pour in the sherry and serve over the meat. Garnish with triangles of fried hominy.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit or hare
Provides the lean meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding richness and savoury flavour to the meat and gravy.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns, and later thickens the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the rich gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, slow-cooked gravy.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a warm, wine-based flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Keep the gentle boil. A vigorous boil toughens the meat's proteins and can break up the pieces, while a gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly so the meat becomes tender.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, pepper, flour, pork, parsley, celery):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, pepper, flour, pork, parsley, celery. 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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