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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with hare, beef, ham, carrot, onions, herbs, pepper, flour, port wine, bread crumbs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin and gut the hare, saving the liver and as much blood as possible.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the hare into pieces and place it in a large pot with all the ingredients.

  2. Add 3 quarts of water and simmer gently for 6 hours.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Hare
Provides the main meat and rich, gamey flavour for the soup.
Lean gravy beef
Adds meaty body and savoury depth to the stock as it simmers.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that rounds out the savoury stock.
French rolls
Their crumb thickens the soup slightly, giving it a fuller body.
Onions
Release sugars during long simmering, adding sweetness and aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 6 hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat slowly and clearly. A hard boil would make the soup cloudy and could toughen the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, carrot, pepper, flour, port wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, pepper, flour, port wine. 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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