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Hare-soup

A hearty soup made with hare, water, onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, peppercorns, and salt, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hare-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the hare into pieces and place in a large pot.

  2. Add enough water to cover the meat.

  3. Chop the onions, carrots, and celery, and add to the pot.

  4. Add bay leaves, peppercorns, and salt to taste.

Simmer and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  2. Strain the soup and serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together240 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare (or rabbit)
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long simmer and flavours the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they soften.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavour to the broth.
Peppercorns
Add a mild, warm aroma and gentle heat to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can cloud the broth, so the heat should be reduced to a slow simmer. Gentle heat over a long time breaks down connective tissue, which is why the meat only becomes tender after the full simmering period.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, carrot, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, celery. 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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