Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Hare Ob Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, hare or partridges, vegetables, peppercorns, herbs, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Hare Ob Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make a clear gravy by simmering beef, hare trimmings, carrots, turnips, onions, peppercorns, and herbs in water.

  2. Cut hare or partridges into small steaks, wash them, and save the blood.

  3. Strain the blood through a fine sieve and add it to the stock for flavor.

Prepare and stew

  1. Flatten and season the steaks, dredge with flour, and brown them lightly in a frying pan.

  2. Add the browned steaks to the strained stock or simply season and add them without frying.

  3. Let the soup stew slowly for at least 1.5 hours, keeping it just below boiling to prevent curdling the blood.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with butter kneaded with browned flour, roux, or potato-mucilage.

  2. Skim the soup before finishing, then add mushroom ketchup and a pinch of cayenne.

  3. Serve with hare steaks in the tureen, and add red wine if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the stock its body and rich meaty flavor as it simmers.
Hare or partridges
Supplies the meat for the steaks and adds gamey flavor to the soup.
Blood (in the method)
Adds body and richness to the stock when strained in.
Butter and flour
Thicken the soup and add a toasted, nutty note from the browned flour.
Onions
Build sweetness and savory depth in the base stock as they cook down.

The step that matters

Keeping the soup just below boiling. Boiling can curdle the blood stirred into the stock, leaving the soup grainy and unpleasant. A slow, gentle simmer keeps it smooth while the flavors develop.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, flour, butter, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, flour, butter, mushroom, ketchup. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes