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Jugged Hare

A preserved hare cooked in a jug with a broth of mutton, beef, veal, ham, vegetables, spices, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine water, mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnips, carrots, onions, mace, salt, and pepper in a large pot.

  2. Stew the mixture for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Strain the soup.

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut the hare into small pieces.

  2. Season the hare with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  3. Place the hare in a stone jar.

  4. Fill the jar with the prepared soup.

Preserve and finish

  1. Seal the jar with a bung.

  2. Cover the jar with a bladder and linen.

  3. Place the jar in a pot of cold water.

  4. Refill the pot with boiling water as the water evaporates.

  5. Simmer for 3 hours.

  6. Once cooled, remove the fat.

  7. Discard the lemon peel.

  8. Thicken the soup with flour kneaded with butter.

  9. Add port wine to the soup.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main meat of the dish, becoming tender during the long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Kneaded with butter, it thickens the soup into a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Kneaded with flour, it adds richness and helps the thickener blend smoothly into the soup.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma to the finished soup.
Mutton
Its collagen and meat flavour give the stock body and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Simmering the jar in water. The water must stay gently simmering and be topped up with boiling water, so the jar heats evenly without boiling hard. Strong bubbling or a dry pot can overcook the hare or let the seal fail, leaving the preserve unsafe.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnip, carrot, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnip, carrot, onion. 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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