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Jugged Hare, Op Civet of Hare

A stew of hare with bacon, shallots, tomato, spices, and a sauce thickened with flour, lemon juice, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Jugged Hare, Op Civet of Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bacon into small pieces.

  2. Cut the hare into joints.

  3. Wipe the hare pieces after washing.

  4. Fry the bacon lightly, then remove it from the pan.

  5. In the bacon fat, fry the hare pieces lightly.

Make the stew

  1. Layer the hare, bacon, whole shallots, chopped tomato, flavouring spices, and a little salt in a large jar.

  2. Add stock to the jar.

  3. Cover the jar with strong paper.

  4. Place the jar in a saucepan with water up to the jar's top.

  5. Cook for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Make a border with the puff pastry on a dish.

  2. Bake until ready.

  3. Remove the hare from the jar.

  4. Add flour, lemon juice, and red currant jelly to the stock.

  5. Boil the sauce.

  6. Pour the sauce over the hare.

  7. Serve hot.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + red curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

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, gentle cooking in the jar.
Fat bacon
Its fat fries the hare and its flavour seasons the stew as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce that coats the hare.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce, balancing the savoury meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Rough puff pastry
Forms a crisp, browned border around the dish when baked.

The step that matters

Cook for 2 to 3 hours until tender. Hare is lean and tough, so it needs long, gentle, moist heat to break down its connective tissue. Cooking it too hard or too briefly leaves the meat dry or chewy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, red currant, lemon, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, red currant, lemon, flour. 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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