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Jugged Hare

A preserved hare cooked in a jug with herbs, citrus rind, onion, and wine, served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the hare thoroughly.

  2. Cut the hare into serving pieces.

  3. Place the pieces in a jugging pot or stone jar.

  4. Add sweet herbs, lemon or Seville orange rind, and the onion with cloves.

  5. If preserving flavor, add ¼ cup water.

  6. If making a ragout, add ¼ cup claret or port wine.

Cook

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

  2. Place the jar in a saucepan with hay at the bottom and fill with water to within 4 inches of the jar's top.

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

  4. Once tender, strain the gravy to remove fat.

  5. Thicken the gravy with flour.

Serve

  1. Serve the hare in a soup dish.

  2. Pour the gravy over the hare.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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
Is the meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle boil.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the hare rather than running thin.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the ragout.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling and topping up. The jar must stay surrounded by steadily boiling water for the full time, because a drop in heat slows the breakdown of tough connective tissue and leaves the hare tough. Keeping the seal tight also stops steam escaping and lowering the cooking temperature.

Swap the onion

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

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

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