Skip to main content
Main

Hare Soup

A hearty stew of hare, ham, suet, onions, carrots, herbs, and port simmered in beef stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Hare Soup

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare and vegetables

  1. Cut the hare into small pieces and save all the blood in a cup.

  2. In a stewpan, combine hare pieces, minced ham, suet, onions, carrots, herbs, pepper, and salt. Fry over high heat for 5 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, make a brown roux with butter and flour.

  2. Moisten the roux with beef bouillon and add port or marsala. Mix well.

Stew and finish

  1. Pour the mixture over the hare and let it stew slowly until fully cooked.

  2. Drain the soup from the meat and set aside the neat pieces of hare for serving.

  3. Return the soup to the heat and skim off any grease that forms.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

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 as it stews slowly in the liquid.
Butter and flour
Form a brown roux that thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty depth.
Beef bouillon
Supplies the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Port or marsala
Adds sweetness and a rich, fortified wine aroma to the sauce.
Onions and carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour as they fry and soften in the pot.

The step that matters

Skimming the grease. Fat from the hare, ham and suet rises to the surface as the soup simmers. Skimming it after returning the soup to heat keeps the broth clear and prevents it tasting greasy.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, pepper, butter, flour, beef):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, pepper, butter, flour, 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.

More hare soup recipes

Scotch 7Imitation 3 See all 137 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes