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Hare Soup

A soup made from hare, kidneys, heart, and lights, simmered with spices, onion, carrot, herbs, and enriched with butter, flour, port wine, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut off the legs and shoulders of the hare and divide the body into 3-4 parts.

  2. Chop the kidneys, heart, and lights into pieces.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the chopped kidneys, heart, and lights to a pot with black pepper, allspice, mace, cloves, onion, carrot, bay leaf, sweet herbs, and water or broth.

  2. Simmer gently for 3 hours until the meat is tender.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the best meat (back and upper legs), cut into bite-sized pieces, and set aside.

  2. Scrape the remaining meat from the bones.

  3. Chop the scraped meat finely.

  4. Pound the finely chopped meat with butter and flour until smooth.

  5. Mix the pounded meat with some gravy.

  6. Stir the mixture back into the pot, simmering for 30 minutes while skimming.

  7. Strain the soup.

  8. Return the strained soup to the pot with the reserved meat.

  9. Add forcemeat balls, port wine, currant jelly, and salt.

  10. Cook until the forcemeat balls are done.

  11. Serve.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

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 during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture when pounded with the meat and flour.
Flour
Binds the pounded meat and thickens the soup slightly.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the finished soup.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity, balancing the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat with butter and flour until smooth. If the mixture stays lumpy, the forcemeat balls and soup will have a grainy texture. Fine chopping and thorough pounding help the meat blend evenly with the fat and flour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, allspice, clove, onion, carrot, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, clove, onion, carrot, butter, 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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