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Soup

Artificial Hare Soup

A soup made from bullock's heart, onions, cloves, mace, herbs, bread, butter, flour, and broth, seasoned with pepper, salt, cayenne, sugar, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 ↓

Artificial Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Procure a bullock's heart and remove the fat, pipes, and outer skin.

  2. Slice the heart and place it in a covered earthen jar.

  3. Add onions (one stuck with cloves), mace, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, bread, and butter rubbed in flour.

  4. Cover the jar with water.

Stew the heart

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

  2. Place the jar in a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water nearly reaches the top of the jar.

  3. Stew for several hours.

  4. Add boiling water as needed.

Finish the soup

  1. Pound the meat with the bread in a mortar.

  2. Add broth to moisten.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Combine the sieved mixture with the stewing gravy and additional beef broth to reach the desired soup quantity.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil.

  6. Adjust seasoning with cayenne and salt.

  7. Add flour and butter until it reaches a creamy consistency.

  8. Stir in sugar and port wine for added flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Bullock's heart
Provides the main meat, which becomes rich flavour and body as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a creamy consistency when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the flour thicken smoothly and softening the flavour.
Bread
Helps thicken the soup when pounded with the meat and passed through a sieve.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar before stewing. A tight seal of paste keeps steam inside the jar, so the heart stews in its own moisture and becomes tender instead of drying out.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, bread, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, bread, butter, flour, sugar. 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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