Name: Hare Soup, or Game Soup
Ingredients: 1 old hare; 2 quarts water (for bones); 2 quarts water (for meat); 3 onions, stuck with cloves; 3 blades of mace

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Hare Soup, or Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Carefully skin the hare, ensuring no hairs remain.
Cut off all the flesh and save the blood and liver.
Chop and bruise the bones.
Place the bones in one pan with 2 quarts of water.
Place the meat in another pan with 2 quarts of water.
Divide the onions, cloves, and mace between the two pans.

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.

Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,078 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,364 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + clovetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,038 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).