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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare and beef cooked in a jar with bacon, bouquet garni, onion, lemon rind, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the jar

  1. Rub the inside of a jar with a clove of garlic.

  2. Layer the bottom with beef steak, bacon, bouquet garni, onion, lemon rind, and a little water or stock.

  3. Add the hare pieces and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Cover the jar tightly, sealing with flour-and-water paste if necessary.

Cook

  1. Place the jar in a large saucepan with water up to 2 inches from the top, or in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, skim off the fat, remove the hare pieces, and thicken the sauce with flour.

  2. Serve the hare pieces on a dish, pouring the hot sauce over them.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 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

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking in its own juices.
Beef steak
Adds meaty depth and body to the sauce as it cooks slowly with the hare.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the sauce during the long cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer sauce and seals the jar.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar tightly. If the lid is not sealed, steam and liquid escape during the long cooking, so the meat dries and the sauce becomes concentrated and thin in flavour. A flour-and-water paste keeps the moisture inside, letting the meat cook gently in its own juices.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, onion, clove, pepper, garlic, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, onion, clove, pepper, garlic, 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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