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Jugged Hare

A hare cooked slowly in a sauce of butter, bacon, flour, stock, wine, onions, herbs, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Clean the hare.

  2. Cut the hare into pieces.

Brown and simmer

  1. Melt the butter and fat in a saucepan.

  2. Add the hare to the saucepan.

  3. Cook the hare until it begins to color.

  4. Remove the hare from the saucepan.

  5. Stir the flour into the sauce to thicken.

  6. Add the water or stock to the saucepan.

  7. Return the hare to the saucepan.

  8. Add the onions, pepper, salt, herbs, and wine to the saucepan.

  9. Cook gently for 1 to 2 hours, depending on the size of the hare.

  10. About 15 minutes before serving, remove the hare from the saucepan.

  11. Mix the vinegar into the sauce to bind it.

  12. Pour the sauce over the hare pieces 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Red wine + thymetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare (in the method)
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a rich sauce as it heats.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness and helps bind the sauce at the end.
Bacon or fat
Carries flavor and helps the hare pieces brown when first cooked.

The step that matters

Cook the hare until it begins to color. Browning the meat in fat before adding liquid builds deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat tastes flatter in the finished sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, vinegar, red wine, pepper, thyme, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, red wine, pepper, thyme, parsley. 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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