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Jugging a Hare

A hare cooked in a jugging pot with herbs, onion, cloves, lemon rind, and broth, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,632 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Rub the hare pieces with a dry cloth and salt.

  2. If the hare is bloody, wash and dry thoroughly.

Jug and cook

  1. Place the hare in a jugging pot or double saucepan with sweet herbs, onion, cloves, lemon rind, and broth or wine.

  2. Cover the jar tightly with a bladder to prevent steam from escaping.

  3. Fill the outside saucepan with hay and boiling water, ensuring the water does not reach the top of the jar by three inches.

  4. Keep the water boiling for three hours until the meat is tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat and strain the gravy through a fine sieve.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  3. Add catsup if desired.

  4. Boil the gravy.

  5. Strain the gravy over the hare in a serving dish.

  6. Prepare pudding for garnish by boiling in a cloth or making into balls.

  7. Fry or simmer the pudding in gravy for ten minutes.

  8. Serve with currant jelly or hunter sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Onion + beeftop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

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

  3. Clove + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + curranttop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Orange + curranttop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 the long, gentle cooking.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the thickened gravy, smoothing its texture.
Beef broth or port wine
Supplies moisture and flavour to the jugged meat and its gravy.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling for three hours. Gentle, sustained moist heat breaks down the tough connective tissue of an older game animal, so the meat becomes tender. Letting the water drop or the jar's lid lose its seal lets steam escape and dries the meat.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, lemon, beef, orange, flour, butter, currant):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, beef, orange, flour, butter, currant. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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