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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare with vegetables, bacon, butter, espagnole sauce, port wine, and red currant jelly, served over fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Joint the hare and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Clean, scrape, peel and slice the vegetables.

Brown and simmer

  1. Melt the butter and add the diced bacon; cook until lightly browned.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables and fry until golden.

  3. Add the hare pieces and herbs, then cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Moisten with the stock and bring to a boil; skim.

  6. Add the sauce, reduce heat, cover and simmer gently for about 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the hare pieces and place them in another stewpan.

  2. Strain the sauce, skim off the fat, and pour it over the hare.

  3. Add the port wine and red currant jelly; simmer for another 10 minutes.

  4. Place the fried bread in the center of a round serving dish.

  5. Arrange the hare pieces on top, pour the sauce over, and garnish with croutons or toasted bread.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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, slow simmering.
Bacon
Its rendered fat adds savory richness to the base for browning the vegetables.
Espagnole sauce
Thickens the liquid and gives the finished sauce body and depth of flavor.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma that round out the sauce's savory flavor.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity while gently thickening and glossing the sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the bacon and vegetables, adding richness and flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the sauce. A rolling boil toughens the meat fibers and can break the sauce, so keeping the heat low lets the hare become tender while the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, port wine, pepper, bread, carrot, turnip, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, port wine, pepper, bread, carrot, turnip, butter. 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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