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Imitation Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with gravy beef, vegetables, and forcemeat balls, flavored with herbs and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Imitation Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a pot and add the flour, stirring until browned.

  2. Add the chopped onion, beef, turnip, carrot, thyme, marjoram, cloves, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  3. Pour in the water or stock and simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the soup and return it to the pot.

Add the forcemeat-balls and serve

  1. Prepare the forcemeat-balls by mixing bread crumbs, pepper, salt, cayenne, parsley, suet, dried herbs, nutmeg, lemon rind, and egg.

  2. Form the mixture into balls, coat with flour, and drop them into the soup.

  3. Add Worcestershire sauce and simmer gently for 10 minutes before 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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Butter
Carries the flour and onion flavour and helps the roux brown for colour and depth.
Flour
Thickens the soup and, browned in butter, adds a nutty colour and flavour.
Gravy beef
Gives the stock its meaty flavour during the long simmer.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat mixture so the balls hold their shape in the soup.
Bread crumbs
Forms the body of the forcemeat balls and soaks up moisture for a tender texture.
Suet
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping the balls moist and rich.

The step that matters

Simmering the forcemeat-balls gently. Vigorous boiling can break the forcemeat balls apart and toughen them, so they should poach at a gentle simmer until set.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, mushroom, ketchup, turnip, butter, carrot):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, mushroom, ketchup, turnip, butter, carrot. 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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