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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made from hare, bacon, Port wine, spices, veal broth, and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Bone the hare and cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Place each piece in barded bacon in a stewpan.

  3. Add Port wine, allspice, mace, bay leaf, onions, and garlic.

  4. Stew until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Rub half the meat through a fine sieve, keeping the remainder warm.

  2. Stew the bones with veal broth and the liquid from the hare.

  3. Season with Cayenne pepper and salt.

  4. Strain the mixture and clarify it with the egg white and yolk.

  5. Run it through a fine sieve.

  6. Add the remaining hare pieces to the cleared soup and thicken with flour and butter.

  7. Boil together for 15 minutes.

  8. Serve in a tureen.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and, rubbed through a sieve, body and flavour to the soup.
Egg
Its white and yolk clarify the strained soup, collecting particles so the broth runs clear.
Flour and butter
Together they form a roux that thickens the soup and gives it a smooth body.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the bones and meat.
Port wine
Adds depth and a little sweetness to the meat as it stews.

The step that matters

Clarify the strained soup with egg white and yolk. Egg proteins coagulate as the soup heats and trap fine suspended particles, which then sit on the coagulated mass and can be strained off. Stirring or boiling too vigorously breaks up the forming raft, leaving the soup cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, allspice, onion, clove, garlic, veal, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, allspice, onion, clove, garlic, veal, pepper. 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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