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Hare Soup a L’anglaise

A stew of hare with carrots, onions, celery, port wine, herbs, cloves, mace, and veal stock.

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

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

  2. Add the carrot, onions, and celery; fry until lightly colored.

  3. Add the hare pieces and brown them.

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

  5. Pour in the port wine and add the garnished bouquet, cloves, mace, and veal stock.

  6. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until cooked through.

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, gamey flavor that defines the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth, and helps lift flavors from the browned pan.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and adds richness to the base.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Brown the hare before adding flour and liquid. Browning creates Maillard flavors on the meat surface that deepen the final soup. Pale meat yields a flatter, less savory broth.

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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