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Jugged Hare

A stew of hare, mutton, beef, veal, and ham simmered with root vegetables, spices, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. In a large pot, combine water, mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnips, carrots, onions, mace, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew the ingredients for 3 to 4 hours, then strain the soup.

Cook the hare

  1. The next day, season the hare pieces with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Place the seasoned hare in a stone jar and fill it with the prepared soup.

  3. Seal the jar with a bung, cover with a bladder and linen, and place it in a pot of cold water.

  4. As the water evaporates, refill with boiling water and let it boil for 3 hours.

  5. Once cooled, remove the fat and discard the lemon peel.

Finish and serve

  1. To serve, thicken the soup with flour kneaded with butter and add 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.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 flavour that the long slow cooking draws into the soup.
Mutton
Adds meaty body and gelatine to the stock during long, gentle stewing.
Gravy beef
Releases collagen and savour into the stock, giving it depth over the long stew.
Flour
Kneaded with butter, it thickens the soup by swelling with liquid as it heats.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar and keeping the water at a boil. If the seal leaks or the outer water runs dry, the contents cook unevenly and can spoil. Gentle, sustained heat draws flavour and gelatine from the meat without breaking it up.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnip, carrot, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, beef, veal, ham, turnip, carrot, onion. 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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