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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare simmered with ham, onions, herbs, stock, and port wine, then boiled in water and served with the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the hare bones in a small soup pot with the ham, onions, thyme, parsley, mace, stock, and port wine.

  2. Bring the pot to a slow boil for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid from the pot.

Prepare the hare

  1. Blanch the hare in cold water until it begins to boil.

  2. Wash the hare in several waters.

  3. Cut the hare into legs, shoulders, and halves.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the hare pieces back into the soup pot with the strained liquid.

  2. Cover the meat with white paper.

  3. Place the lid on the pot.

  4. Put the soup pot into a stew pan filled with boiling water, ensuring the water comes three-quarters up the pot.

  5. Boil for about 1 hour.

  6. Add more boiling water as needed.

  7. Once done, place the hare on a dish.

  8. Skim the fat from the liquid.

  9. Pour the liquid over the hare.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Thyme + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow, moist cooking.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and acidity to the rich braising liquid.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base that gently cooks and moistens the meat.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour to the cooking liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Keep the pot at a gentle simmer in the water bath. Slow, gentle heat lets collagen in the meat break down into tender texture without toughening or drying the hare. Rapid boiling would toughen the proteins and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, thyme, parsley, port wine):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, thyme, parsley, port wine. 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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