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Hare Soup

A stew of hare pieces, water, onions, herbs, turnips, ham, pepper, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Do not wash the hare; preserve all the blood.

  2. Place the hare pieces and blood into a stewpan with water.

  3. Add the onions, sweet herbs, turnips, and ham.

  4. Stew gently until the hare is tender, adjusting time for the hare's age.

  5. For a spicier flavor, add Cayenne or long pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in mushroom ketchup.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 stewing.
Blood (in the method)
Thickens the soup and gives it a rich, deep color and body.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body as they soften in the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory, umami depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the hare is tender. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibers and can leave meat stringy, while slow simmering breaks down connective tissue. Older hares need longer cooking, so judge by tenderness rather than the clock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, turnip, ham, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, turnip, ham, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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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