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Jugged Hare

A preserved hare cooked in a jar with herbs, citrus rind, onion, and water or wine, then served with its gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 and cut it into serving pieces.

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

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

  4. If preserving flavor, add ½ cup water; for a ragout, use ½ cup claret or Port wine and the juice of a Seville orange or lemon.

Steam

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

  2. Place a little hay in the bottom of a saucepan and set the jar inside.

  3. Pour water into the saucepan until it reaches within 4 inches of the top of the jar.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Once tender, strain the gravy to remove fat, thicken it with flour, and bring to a boil.

  2. Serve the hare in a soup dish and pour the gravy over it.

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

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

  4. Onion + port winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 steaming.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid as it softens.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the hare.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling during the steam. Steady boiling keeps the sealed jar at steam temperature for the full time, which is needed to make tough hare meat tender. If the water drops and stops boiling, the meat cooks less evenly and may stay tough, so the water must be topped up as it evaporates.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, 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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