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Artificial Hare Soup

A soup made from bullock's heart simmered with onions, cloves, mace, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Artificial Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Procure a bullock's heart and remove the fat, pipes, and outer skin.

  2. Slice the heart and place it in an earthen jar, adding onions, cloves, mace, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, bread, and butter.

  3. Cover the ingredients with water and seal the jar tightly.

Stew

  1. Place the jar in a pot of boiling water, ensuring the water nearly reaches the top of the jar.

  2. Stew for several hours, adding boiling water as needed.

  3. Once the meat is tender, pound it with the bread in a mortar, moistening with beef broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Pass the mixture through a sieve and combine with the stewing gravy and enough beef broth to achieve the desired soup quantity.

  2. Bring to a boil and adjust seasoning with cayenne and salt.

  3. If the soup is not thick enough, add flour and butter until it reaches a creamy consistency.

  4. Stir in sugar and a splash of port wine for added flavor.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bullock's heart
Provides the meat that becomes the body of the soup after long slow stewing.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the stewing gravy as they soften.
Bread
Pounded with the meat, it helps thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a creamy consistency when added with butter.

The step that matters

Stewing in the sealed jar. The jar must stay sealed and the outer pot must keep water boiling, so the meat cooks gently in its own juices. Slow, moist heat breaks down connective tissue and makes the meat tender enough to pound and sieve smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, bread, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, bread, butter, flour, sugar. 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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