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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made from roasted hare, ham, onions, spices, stock, bread crumbs, and red port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Hare Soup

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 ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut up the remains of a roasted hare.

  2. In a stew pan, add a few slices of ham, whole onions, mace, stock, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Simmer on the stove very slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture and pull all the meat from the bones.

Make the soup

  1. Pound the meat and boiled ham very finely in a mortar.

  2. Return the pounded mixture to the stew pan with the strained liquid.

  3. Add the crumbs of 2 French rolls and ½ pint of red port.

  4. Simmer very slowly for 30 minutes.

  5. Rub the soup through a fine sieve and return it to the stew pan or a small soup pot to keep hot.

  6. Season with a little Cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt if needed.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 flavour and, once pounded, body to the soup.
French rolls
Their crumbs thicken the soup and give it a smoother, richer body.
Red port
Adds sweetness and depth, and its acidity balances the rich meat.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury depth into the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmering the soup very slowly. A gentle simmer extracts flavour from the meat and bones without making the liquid cloudy or greasy. Boiling hard can break up the texture and toughen the meat, so keep the heat low throughout.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

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