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Hare Soup a L’anglaise

A stew of hare with carrots, onions, celery, port wine, spices, and veal stock, finished with a bouquet garni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 a L’anglaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped carrot, onions, and celery; fry until light in color.

  3. Add the pieces of hare and brown them.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the browned hare and stir well.

Simmer and serve

  1. Pour in the port wine and add the bouquet garni, cloves, and mace.

  2. Add the veal stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and let it sit 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.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, gamy flavor of the soup.
Butter
Carries the browning of the vegetables and hare, adding richness to the base.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the stock and wine.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and acidity that balance the rich meat.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid body of the soup and adds savory gelatin and flavor.

The step that matters

Brown the hare before adding the flour. Browning the meat creates Maillard flavors that carry through the soup. Sprinkling flour onto meat that is only grey leaves a pasty, less flavorful base.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, onion, celery, flour, port wine, clove):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, celery, flour, port wine, clove. 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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