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Jugged Hare

A slow‑cooked rabbit or hare braised with onion, pork fat, celery, stock, and flavored with parsley, paprika, currant jelly, lemon juice, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 meat

  1. Skin, clean, and joint the rabbit or hare.

  2. Cut the back into two pieces and sever every joint.

  3. Fry the sliced onion in hot dripping until pale brown.

  4. Add the meat, seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, and cook for 10 minutes, turning often.

Layer and stew

  1. In an agate‑iron saucepan, layer chopped fat salt pork, sprinkle with onion, parsley, and paprika.

  2. Place the pieces of hare on top, cover with another layer of chopped pork and onion.

  3. Optionally, add bits of fresh tomato.

  4. Pour in the weak stock, which has had a stalk of celery boiled in it.

  5. Fit a tight lid.

  6. Set the saucepan in a vessel of cold water and bring slowly to a boil.

  7. Maintain this for 3 hours or until the meat is tender.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the meat and thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  2. Stir in currant jelly and lemon juice, simmer for 1 minute.

  3. Pour in the sherry and turn the sauce over the meat.

  4. Garnish with triangles of fried hominy, serving a bit with each portion.

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 main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
All-purpose flour
Coats the meat and later thickens the gravy, giving it body.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat and flavour into the pan, enriching the meat and gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the dripping.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity tartness that balances the rich gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the heavy, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Maintaining a gentle simmer for 3 hours. Boiling too hard toughens meat proteins and dries the surface, while slow, steady heat in a sealed pan breaks down connective tissue and keeps the meat moist.

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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