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Soup

Ha Re, Rabbit, or Partridge Soup

A rich soup made by stewing hare, rabbit, or partridge with vegetables and herbs, thickened with a flour and butter paste and finished with wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ha Re, Rabbit, or Partridge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut off the legs and shoulders of the hare or birds and divide the body crossways.

  2. Stew the meat gently in 3 quarts of water with the carrot, onion, cloves, mace, black peppercorns, and sweet herbs until tender, about 3 hours.

  3. Prepare 12-15 forcemeat balls while the meat is cooking.

Make the soup

  1. Once the meat is tender, remove it from the bones and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Mince the remaining meat and pound it with butter and flour moistened with some soup.

  3. Rub this mixture through a sieve and add it to the soup to thicken.

  4. Let the soup simmer for another 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

  5. Pass the soup through a tamis back into the pan, then add the meat, wine, and currant jelly.

Serve

  1. Season with salt, add the forcemeat balls, and warm everything through before serving.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare or birds (in the method)
Provides the main meat and rich, savoury flavour to the broth as it stews.
Butter and flour
Pounded together, they form a paste that thickens the soup when rubbed through into it.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy body that balances the savoury broth.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter and flour mixture through the sieve. If the mixture is not pounded smooth and moistened enough with soup, lumps form and thickening is uneven. Pressing it through a sieve breaks up remaining lumps so the flour cooks evenly into the soup.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, clove, mace, butter, flour, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, clove, mace, butter, flour, 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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