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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made from hare, water, vegetables, thyme, allspice, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Thyme and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,077 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin the hare and wipe it with a cloth.

  2. Cut it open and remove the entrails, saving any blood.

  3. Cut the hare into pieces and place in a pot with water and blood.

Make the soup

  1. Add carrot, turnip, onion, thyme, allspice, and flour mixed with cold water.

  2. Stir until boiling, then let it boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Set aside the best pieces of hare (back and upper joints of hind legs).

  4. Boil the soup for an additional 2 hours.

  5. Remove the remaining meat, shred it, and return it to the soup.

  6. Strain the soup 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.

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. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 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 and rich, gamey flavour that gives the soup its character.
Flour
Mixed with cold water and stirred in, it thickens the broth as it cooks.
Blood (in the method)
Added to the pot with the hare, it enriches the broth and helps thicken and darken it.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling pot. Flour mixed with cold water must be fully dispersed before it meets hot liquid, or it clumps into lumps instead of thickening the soup evenly. Stirring until boiling keeps the starch suspended so it swells smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, thyme, allspice, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, thyme, allspice, 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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