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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare pieces cooked in a jug with herbs, citrus rind, onion, and wine or water, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Wash the hare pieces thoroughly and place them in a jugging pot or stone jar.

  2. Add sweet herbs, lemon or orange rind, and the onion with cloves to the jar.

  3. If preserving flavor, add ¼ cup water; if making a ragout, add ¼ cup claret or port wine and the juice of the citrus.

  4. Seal the jar tightly with a bladder to prevent steam from escaping.

Steam and finish

  1. Place a little hay in the bottom of a saucepan, set the jar inside, and fill with water until it reaches 4 inches from the top of the jar.

  2. Boil the water for about 3 hours, ensuring it remains boiling and topping up as needed.

  3. Once the hare is tender, strain the gravy from the fat and thicken it with flour, then bring to a boil.

  4. Serve the hare in a soup dish and pour the gravy over it.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the rich, dense meat that becomes tender during long, gentle steaming.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it cooks slowly.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the meat rather than running thin.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth to the ragout gravy, which helps balance the rich meat.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling and topping it up. The jar is cooked by gentle steam in a water bath. If the water drops below a boil, heat transfer slows and the hare cooks unevenly and may not become tender. Keeping the bath topped up prevents it from boiling dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, clove, port wine, orange, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, port wine, orange, flour. 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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