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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare pieces cooked in a sealed jar with vegetables, broth, brandy, port wine, and red currant jelly, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the pieces of hare in bacon fat.

  2. Place hare in a jar or earthenware vessel that can be sealed.

  3. Add carrots, onions, celery, lemon juice, mignonette pepper, and salt.

  4. Pour in enough broth to cover the contents and add brandy.

Steam and make the gravy

  1. Seal the jar tightly and place it in a pan of cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil and steam the jar for 3 hours.

  3. After cooking, stir in port wine and red currant jelly until dissolved.

  4. Remove the jar from the water, strain the gravy, and remove the fat.

  5. Thicken the gravy with blood or a mixture of flour and butter, then strain it again.

Serve

  1. Serve the hare with stuffing balls fried in butter.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, gentle steaming.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and colour to the finished gravy.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the rich gravy.
Flour and butter
Thicken the strained gravy to a smoother, more cohesive texture.
Onions
Break down during steaming to add savoury sweetness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Seal the jar tightly and steam for 3 hours. A tight seal and gentle steam keep moisture in, so the hare cooks slowly in its own juices and becomes tender rather than dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, lemon, pepper, brandy, port wine, red currant):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, lemon, pepper, brandy, port wine, red currant. 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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