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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made from hare, onions, spices, and stock, finished with port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Wipe the hare and cut it into joints, saving the blood.

  2. In a stew pan, combine hare pieces, onion, glaze, peppercorns, cloves, and gravy coloring.

  3. Pour in the stock and stew gently for 2.5 hours.

Strain the stock

  1. Remove the best meat from the hare and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Return the bones to the pan, stew for 1 more hour, then strain.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix flour with a little cold stock.

  2. Stir in ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt until boiling.

  3. Add the hare pieces.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the port wine.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 rich, gamey flavor in the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock as it heats, giving the soup body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and cooks the meat.
Port wine
Adds sweet, fruity depth when stirred in at the end.
Ketchup
Adds tang and a touch of sweetness to the savory base.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold stock first. Starch granules clump when dry flour hits hot liquid. Blending the flour into a little cold stock first lets it disperse evenly, so it thickens smoothly as the soup comes to a boil.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sauce, clove, ketchup, 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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