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Hare Soup with Forcemeat Balls

A slow‑cooked hare soup thickened with a forcemeat ball mixture, finished with port wine and served with ham‑garnished croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hare Soup with Forcemeat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the hare with cayenne and salt in stock for 4‑5 hours, skimming off fat.

  2. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  3. Pound the best pieces of hare in a mortar, moistening with stock until smooth.

  4. Return the stock to the saucepan, add the hare puree, and stir until boiling.

  5. Thicken with creme‑de‑riz or flour if needed, aiming for a consistency of single cream.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add port wine and small forcemeat balls.

  2. For the forcemeat balls, mix suet, bread crumbs, parsley, lemon peel, herbs, salt, pepper, and the cooked liver in a bowl.

  3. Add enough beaten egg to bind the mixture, then form into marble‑sized balls using a little flour.

  4. Poach the balls in salted water for about 7 minutes or fry in clarified butter until golden brown.

  5. Serve the soup with croutons garnished with ham on the side.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meaty flavour and, once puréed, the body of the soup.
Flour
Starch thickens the hot stock to a smooth, lightly textured consistency.
Egg
Coagulates when heated, binding the forcemeat balls together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat balls moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and soften the forcemeat balls, giving a lighter texture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and a rich, fruity aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup. Stir the flour or creme‑de‑riz into simmering stock so it disperses without lumps, then let it cook briefly. Starch granules swell as they heat and thicken the soup; flour added dry clumps and undercooked flour tastes raw.

“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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