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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with hare, beef shin, onion, celery, and seasonings, thickened with rice flour and flavored with mushroom ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin the hare and carefully remove the entrails, saving the blood.

  2. Wipe the hare with a damp towel to remove any hairs, then cut it into pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Pour the blood into a large soup pot and add the cold water and small pieces of beef.

  2. Add the hare pieces to the pot and bring to a boil over low heat.

  3. Once boiling, add the onion, celery, salt, and peppercorns; cover and simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the back and legs of the hare and continue to simmer the remaining parts for 1.5 hours.

  5. Cut the meat from the back and legs into small pieces and set aside.

  6. After 3.5 hours of boiling, strain the soup through a fine sieve into a large bowl.

  7. Rinse the pot with cold water and return the strained liquid to it.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the rice flour with the mushroom ketchup and Worcestershire sauce until smooth.

  2. Add this mixture and the reserved meat to the soup, return to the heat, and stir until boiling.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes, then serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it body.
Blood (in the method)
Adds richness and helps give the soup its dark, full colour.
Shin of beef
Contributes savoury meaty flavour and body to the stock.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the finished soup.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds tangy, savoury depth that rounds out the seasoning.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour mixture into the soup. Rice flour mixed in as a smooth paste thickens evenly; added as lumps or left unstirred, it clumps and leaves a grainy texture. Bringing it to a boil activates the thickening.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, celery, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, celery, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom. 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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