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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made from hare, onions, carrot, herbs, spices, and enriched with butter, flour, port wine, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Hare Soup

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 ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut off the legs and shoulders of the hare and divide the body into 3 or 4 parts.

  2. Chop the kidneys, heart, and liver into pieces; set aside to enrich the gravy.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the hare parts, onions, carrot, bay leaf, sweet herbs, and water or broth.

  2. Add black pepper, allspice, mace, and cloves. Simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Once the meat is tender, remove the best pieces (back and upper legs) and set aside.

  4. Scrape the remaining meat from the bones, chop it finely, and pound it with butter and flour until smooth.

  5. Mix the pounded meat with some of the gravy and stir it back into the pot.

  6. Let it simmer gently for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a tamis and return it to the pot with the reserved meat and force-meat balls.

  2. Add port wine, currant jelly, and salt. Cook until the balls are done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 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 main meat and, through its bones, the rich flavour of the gravy.
Butter
Enriches the pounded meat and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the pounded meat mixture so it blends smoothly into the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the gamey meat.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat with butter and flour until smooth. If the meat is not finely chopped and worked smooth, the mixture stays lumpy and does not blend into the gravy, leaving a grainy texture in the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, pepper, allspice, clove, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, pepper, allspice, clove, butter, flour. 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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