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Jugged Hare

A hare cooked in a sealed jar with herbs, citrus rind, onion, and wine or water, then served with thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the hare thoroughly and cut it into pieces suitable for serving.

  2. Place the pieces in a jugging pot or stone jar.

  3. Add sweet herbs, lemon or orange rind, and the onion with cloves.

  4. Add ½ cup water for preserving flavor, or use ½ cup claret or Port wine and the juice of a Seville orange or lemon for a ragout.

  5. Seal the jar tightly with a bladder to prevent steam from escaping.

Cook

  1. Place a little hay in the bottom of a saucepan and set the jar inside.

  2. Pour water into the saucepan until it reaches within 4 inches of the top of the jar.

  3. Boil the water for about 3 hours, ensuring it remains boiling and topping up as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy from the fat.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour, then bring it to a boil.

  3. Serve the hare in a soup dish.

  4. Pour the gravy over it.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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, gentle moist cooking.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it clings to the meat rather than running thin.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the liquid as it cooks in the jar.
Lemon or seville orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling and topping it up. The jar is cooked gently by steam and hot water surrounding it. If the outer water drops below a boil, the hare cooks too slowly and may stay tough, so the water must be kept boiling throughout.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, port wine, orange, flour. 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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