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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with hare, beef, ham, vegetables, herbs, spices, and port wine, simmered for hours.

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.

  2. Cut the hare into pieces and place it in a stewpan with all the ingredients.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer gently for 6 hours.

  2. Strain through a sieve, returning the best parts of the hare to the soup.

  3. 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.

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 flavour that the broth is built around.
Lean gravy beef
Adds meaty body and savoury depth to the long-simmered stock.
Port wine
Adds acidity and sweetness while helping extract flavour from the meat and herbs.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup slightly and adds a toasted, roasted colour and flavour.
French rolls
Their crumb soaks up liquid, giving the soup a thicker, smoother body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 6 hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavour and softens the meat slowly. A hard boil would toughen the proteins and cloud the broth, so keep the liquid just barely bubbling.

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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