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Hare and Mock-turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from hare, beef, vegetables, and spices, simmered for several hours and finished with ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,077 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hare and Mock-turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut open the hare and remove the entrails, saving the blood.

  2. Cut the body into pieces and place in a pot with water and the saved blood.

  3. Add the beef, carrot, turnip, onion, thyme, allspice, and flour mixed with cold water.

  4. Stir until boiling, then let it boil for 1.5 hours.

Simmer and strain

  1. Set aside the best pieces of hare (back and upper joints of hind legs).

  2. Boil the soup for an additional 2 hours.

  3. Remove the remaining meat, shred it, and return it to the soup.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the reserved hare pieces and ketchup to the purified soup.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, then season with pepper and salt before serving.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Beef
Contributes meaty flavour and body to the stock as it simmers for hours.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a fuller, more body-rich texture.
Ketchup
Adds tomato-based sweetness and acidity to round out the savoury stock.
Hare (in the method)
Provides the main game flavour and richness of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture in until boiling. Flour mixed with cold water must be fully dispersed before heating; otherwise it clumps and does not thicken the soup evenly as it comes to a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, thyme, allspice, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, thyme, allspice, pepper, 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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