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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare simmered with herbs, spices, and lemon zest, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Wash hare well and cut into pieces.

  2. Place hare in stew pan with sweet herbs, cloves, onion, black peppercorns, allspice, and lemon zest.

  3. Cover with water and let it simmer for 2 hours, skimming regularly.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat with a slotted spoon and keep it warm by the fire.

  2. In a separate bowl, roll butter in flour, then add it to the gravy.

  3. Stir well and let it boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain gravy over hare and serve.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 during the long, slow simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it a smooth, rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it boils, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Onion
Releases sweetness and savoury depth into the cooking liquid during the simmer.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the gravy. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid, and lumps form if it is added raw. Rolling the butter in flour first coats the starch so it disperses, and a full boil then cooks out the raw flour taste and sets the thickening.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, lemon, butter, 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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