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Jugged Hare

A slow‑cooked hare and beef stew baked in a jar with onions, mace, lemon rind, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the hare into joints and make forcemeat balls as for rabbit.

  2. Dust the hare and forcemeat balls with flour and fry them lightly.

Layer and cover

  1. In an earthen jar, layer the beef and hare with the onions, mace, salt, peppercorns, and lemon rind.

  2. Pour the red wine over the layers.

  3. Cover the jar with brown paper and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 4 to 5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a garnish of cut lemon and currant jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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, slow moist cooking.
Beef
Adds extra meat that breaks down during slow cooking, enriching the body of the dish.
Red wine
Moistens the layers and its acidity helps tenderise the meat during the long bake.
Flour
Dusting helps the hare and forcemeat balls brown lightly when fried.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the liquid as they cook slowly.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven under brown paper. Cooking low and slow for hours lets the tough connective tissue in the hare and beef break down gradually. A hot oven would toughen the meat and dry out the wine-based liquid before it becomes tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, onion, clove, lemon, red wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, onion, clove, lemon, red 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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