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Jugged Hare

A hare cooked in a jar with herbs, lemon, onion, and port wine, served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Season the hare joints with pepper, salt, allspice, and mace.

  2. Place them in a stone jar with sweet herbs, lemon peel, onion, gravy beef, and hare bones.

  3. Add water and port wine to the jar.

Cook

  1. Tie the jar tightly and place it in a saucepan of water up to the neck.

  2. Boil the water for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Place the jar in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, remove the fat, and thicken it.

  2. Serve the hare with the gravy in a deep dish.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow, gentle cooking.
Gravy beef
Adds meaty depth and gelatin that enriches the body of the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that balances the savoury gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar before the water bath. A tightly tied jar keeps steam and liquid inside, so the meat cooks gently in its own juices. If the seal is loose, liquid evaporates and the hare can dry out and lose flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, allspice, lemon, onion, clove, beef, port wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, lemon, onion, clove, beef, port wine. 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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