Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Hare

A stew of hare, ham, onions, thyme, parsley, mace, stock and port wine, simmered until tender.

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

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the bones from the hare and place them in a small soup pot with the ham, onions, thyme, parsley, mace, stock, and port wine.

  2. Boil for 2 hours, then strain the liquid.

Prepare the hare

  1. Blanch the hare in cold water until it boils, then wash it several times.

  2. Cut the hare into pieces: legs in half, shoulders from the back, and split the back down, cutting each half into three pieces.

Braise and serve

  1. Put the hare pieces back into the soup pot with the strained liquid and add the diced ham.

  2. Cover the meat with white paper and the pot lid, then place the pot in a stewpan of water, ensuring the water comes three-quarters up the pot.

  3. Boil for 3 hours or until the hare is tender, adding more boiling water as needed.

  4. Serve the hare in the center of a dish with the ham around it, skimming the fat from the liquid before pouring it over the hare.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Thyme + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Long gentle simmering turns its tough muscle fibers tender and rich.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the cooking liquid, reduced in the stock.
Ham
Contributes savory, salty flavor to the stock and the finished dish.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic flavor into the stock as they cook.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle boil around the pot. Water should reach about three-quarters up the pot so the meat cooks gently and evenly. Too vigorous a boil can toughen the meat and make the liquid cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, onion, thyme, parsley, ham):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, onion, thyme, parsley, ham. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes