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Superlative Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with hare, ham, onions, mace, thyme, marjoram, parsley, and beef stock, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Superlative Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Place the hare joints and ham in a large soup pot or stewpan.

  2. Add the chopped onions, mace, thyme, marjoram, parsley, and beef stock.

  3. Bring to a gentle simmer and let it stew for 2 hours.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Slow cooking breaks down its meat into tender pieces and enriches the broth with savoury flavour.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savoury depth that seasons the broth as it cooks.
Mild onions
Soften and turn sweet as they cook, adding aroma and body to the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the cooking liquid that carries flavour and gives the soup its body.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. Boiling hard toughens the meat's proteins and churns fat into the liquid, leaving the hare dry and the broth cloudy. A slow, steady simmer keeps the meat tender and the soup clear over the 2 hours.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, thyme, marjoram, parsley, beef):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, thyme, marjoram, parsley, beef. 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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