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Hare, Rabbit, or Partridge Soup

A hearty soup made with hare, rabbit, or partridge, simmered with vegetables, spices, wine, and thickened with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hare, Rabbit, or Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut off the legs and shoulders of the hare and divide the body crossways.

  2. While the hare is cooking, prepare the forcemeat balls.

  3. Remove the meat from the back and upper leg joints.

  4. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  5. Mince the remaining meat.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the pieces gently in 3 quarts of water with the carrot, onion, cloves, mace, peppercorns, and sweet herbs until the meat is tender, about 3 hours.

  2. Pound the minced meat with butter and flour moistened with some soup.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add the sieved mixture to the soup to thicken.

  5. Let the soup simmer for another 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

  6. Strain the soup back into the pan.

  7. Add the reserved meat.

  8. Add the wine.

  9. Add the currant jelly.

  10. Season with salt.

  11. Add the forcemeat balls.

  12. Warm everything through before serving.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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

Flour
Thickens the soup when pounded with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the thickening mixture smoothly.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity note that balances the savoury broth.
Hare meat
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the sieved mixture to the soup. Flour must be fully cooked out and evenly dispersed, or the soup turns lumpy and tastes raw. Moistening it with soup first and sieving it helps prevent clumps, and the soup should simmer after so the starch thickens properly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, clove, meat, butter, flour, port wine. 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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