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Another Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with hare, beef, ham, vegetables, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Thyme and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Another Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the hare, allspice, mace, salt, black pepper, parsley, lemon thyme, winter savory, water, beef, ham, carrots, and onions.

  2. Bring to a boil and let it reduce to 3 quarts.

  3. Remove the hare and strain the soup over it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the port wine and bring to a boil 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 + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and flavor that the soup is built around.
Beef
Adds meaty body and savory depth to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the simmered broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth during reduction.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and rich aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Reducing the soup to 3 quarts. Simmering concentrates the flavor of the broth as water evaporates, so the soup must be reduced gently and measured. Boiling too hard can cloud the broth and over-concentrate it, while stopping early leaves it thin and weak.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, pepper, parsley, lemon, thyme, winter savory, beef):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, pepper, parsley, lemon, thyme, winter savory, beef. 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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