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Hash, Stew, or Jug

A hearty stew of hare with gravy, herbs, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hash, Stew, or Jug

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak hare joints in shallot vinegar with bay leaves and cloves for several hours.

  2. Prepare gravy by boiling meat trimmings, hare parts, onions, ham, carrots, herbs, and peppercorns for flavor.

  3. Strain the prepared gravy and vinegar over the hare.

Stew and finish

  1. Lay hare joints in a stew-pan, season with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  2. Stew gently for 3-5 hours until tender.

  3. Thicken gravy with butter rolled in flour and chopped liver.

  4. Add port wine, catsup, anchovy, or other flavorings as desired.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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.
Butter
Combined with flour to thicken the gravy and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled with butter.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the gravy as a flavoring.
Onions
Build savoury depth in the gravy as they cook down.
Shallot vinegar
Acidity that helps soften the hare joints during soaking.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 3-5 hours until tender. Slow, low-heat simmering breaks down connective tissue in tough hare meat. Boiling hard can toughen the muscle fibres and leave the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, shallot, vinegar, clove, ham, carrot, nutmeg):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, shallot, vinegar, clove, ham, carrot, nutmeg. 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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