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Jugged Hare

Jugged Hare is a hare cooked in a jar with water, butter, flour, lemon slices, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the hare

  1. Place the hare in a jar or jug.

  2. Submerge the jar in a pot of boiling water, ensuring the water does not enter the jar.

  3. Boil for 3 to 4 hours, adding water as needed.

  4. Remove the hare and strain the liquid.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim off the fat and thicken the liquid with butter and flour.

  2. If the hare cools, return it to the jug with the thickened gravy and heat in boiling water until hot, but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with lemon slices and currant jelly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the jar.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, and helps give it a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats with the butter.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tangy fruit flavour that balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Keep the water out of the jar and do not boil the reheated hare. Water entering the jar dilutes the juices and gravy, and boiling the hare again toughens the meat and can make the gravy break or turn grainy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon. 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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