Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Hare

A hare cooked in a jar with beef, bacon, onion, lemon rind, and herbs, then served with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. 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 the jar

  1. Rub the inside of an earthenware jar with a clove of garlic.

  2. Layer the hare pieces, beef steak, bacon, bouquet garni, onion, and lemon rind in the jar. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Cover the jar tightly. Seal the jar with flour‑and‑water paste if necessary.

Cook

  1. Place the jar in a large saucepan with water up to 2 inches from the top.

  2. Alternatively, cook the jar in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim off the fat.

  2. Remove the hare pieces.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour.

  4. Arrange the hare on a dish. Pour the hot sauce over it. Serve.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 steak
Adds meaty flavour and body to the rich sauce as it cooks down.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the meat and the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the jar, so the meat braises gently in its own moisture instead of drying out or losing flavour to the water bath.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, onion, clove, pepper, garlic):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, onion, clove, pepper, garlic. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes