Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Hare

A hare cooked in a jar with spices, lemon rind, onion, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the hare

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

  2. Coat the pieces well and place them in a stone jar.

Make the jug

  1. Add the lemon rind, sweet herbs, onion with cloves, gravy beef, and hare bones.

  2. Pour in the water and port, then tie the jar tightly.

  3. Submerge the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring it stays boiling for 3 hours.

  4. After 3 hours, remove the jar, strain the gravy, and clear off the fat.

  5. Thicken the gravy and serve hot in a deep dish.

  6. Alternatively, bake the jar in an oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours, then strain the gravy.

  7. If desired, add toasted bacon slices around the dish when serving.

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 main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in liquid.
Gravy beef
Adds meaty flavor and body to the gravy as it slowly releases its juices.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the gravy while the jar cooks.
Hare bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the liquid, giving the gravy body.

The step that matters

Keeping the jar at a steady boil. The jar is cooked in boiling water for hours, so the water must stay boiling. Lower heat lets the meat cook unevenly and slows the gentle breakdown of connective tissue that makes the hare tender.

Swap the mace

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

  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. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes