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Jugged Hare

A hare cooked in a jug with bacon, pepper, salt, mace, onion, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the hare pieces with bacon and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Place the hare in an earthen jug with mace, the onion, and sweet herbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the jug tightly and set it in a pot of boiling water for three hours.

  2. Turn the contents into a dish, remove the onion and sweet herbs, and serve hot.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Hare
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during slow, gentle cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat that moistens the lean hare meat as it cooks.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma to the liquid and meat inside the jug.

The step that matters

Cover the jug tightly and set it in a pot of boiling water. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the jug, so the hare braises in its own moisture rather than drying out. Gentle, sustained heat from the surrounding water breaks down the tough connective tissue in hare slowly and evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mace, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mace, 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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