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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare with bacon, herbs, claret, port wine, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin and gut the hare.

  2. Cut it into convenient-sized joints.

  3. Dredge the joints with flour.

  4. Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the hare pieces until browned.

Stew

  1. Lay the bacon slices in the bottom of a stewpan and pack the hare pieces on top of the bacon.

  2. Season the hare with salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the herbs, lemon peel, onion stuck with cloves, and peppercorns.

  4. Moisten the stew with claret and gravy.

  5. Cover tightly.

  6. Simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours until tender.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the hare pieces and keep warm over boiling water.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed in a little claret.

  4. Stir in the red-currant jelly.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Is the main meat, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering in liquid.
Butter
Browns the flour-dusted hare pieces in the frying pan, adding richness and colour.
Claret
Moistens the stew and gives a wine flavour that deepens during simmering.
Flour
Coats the hare for browning and later thickens the gravy into a sauce.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity that balances the rich, savoury gravy.
Bacon
Lies beneath the hare, releasing salty, smoky fat that flavours the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours until tender. A rapid boil toughens the meat and can break the joints apart, while gentle simmering slowly dissolves collagen so the hare becomes tender and the sauce stays clear.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, port wine, thyme, parsley, onion, clove, flour):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine, thyme, parsley, onion, clove, 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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