Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Hare

A hare cooked in a sealed jar with onion, herbs, and water, thickened with arrowroot and served with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Arrowroot and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 340 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin, clean, and wash the hare, then cut it into pieces.

  2. Place the hare pieces in a jar with the onion, herbs, water, and seasoning.

  3. Cover the jar tightly to minimize steam escape.

Cook

  1. Put the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water does not cover the jar.

  2. Boil constantly for 3 to 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once done, transfer the hare pieces to a serving dish.

  2. Skim off any fat from the gravy and thicken it with the arrowroot.

  3. Boil the thickened gravy and pour it over the hare.

  4. Serve with red currant or rowan jelly 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. Arrowroot + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Arrowroot + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ketchup + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it boils.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil constantly for 3 to 4 hours. The jar must stay in gently boiling water for the whole time. If the water stops boiling, the hare will not become tender. Keeping the lid tight traps steam so the meat cooks in its own juices without drying out.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ketchup, onion, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ketchup, onion, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Arrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes