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Hare Soup, No. 1

A hearty soup made by simmering hare pieces with vegetables, herbs, spices, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hare Soup, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the hare and vegetables

  1. Cut the hare into joints and dredge each piece with flour.

  2. Fry the hare pieces in butter until browned.

  3. In the same butter, fry the carrot, onions, celery, garlic, and mushroom.

Make the stock

  1. Combine the fried ingredients in a stewpan with water, herbs, parsley, salt, sugar, mace, cloves, mustard, and cayenne.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim, then simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the hare, cut the meat into 16 pieces, and return the bones and trimmings to the stewpan.

  4. Add 2 quarts of stock and the hare's blood, then boil for 2 hours.

Sieve and finish

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, incorporating as much meat as possible.

  2. Return the hare pieces to the stewpan and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Add port wine and simmer for another 10 minutes 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 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 meat and bones that give the soup its main body and rich flavor.
Flour
Coats the hare so it browns in the butter and helps thicken the soup.
Butter
Carries the heat for browning the hare and vegetables, building savory flavor.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding aroma and depth to the stock.
Hare's blood
Thickens the soup and adds richness as its proteins set with heat.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and aroma to finish the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the hare's blood. Blood thickens the soup as its proteins set with heat. It should be stirred in evenly so it blends smoothly into the stock rather than clumping or scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, carrot, celery, garlic, mushroom, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, carrot, celery, garlic, mushroom, parsley. 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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