Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Hare

A stew of hare, ham, vegetables, and herbs simmered in port wine and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the hare and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Peel and chop the onions, carrot, and celery. Stick cloves into one onion and chop the other finely.

  3. Wash the herbs and place them in a piece of muslin with the onion stuck with cloves and the mace; tie securely with string.

  4. Cut the ham into slices.

Stew

  1. In a stew jar, layer pieces of hare, ham, carrot, onion, celery, salt, pepper, cayenne, and grated nutmeg until full.

  2. Cover with stock or water, then add catsup, Worcestershire sauce, and sugar.

  3. Place the lid on the jar and stew gently for three hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Boil the liver from the hare and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the flour with the wine into a smooth batter, add the liver, and pour this mixture into the stew jar half an hour before serving.

  3. Let it boil well to cook the flour.

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. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  2. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare
Forms the main body of the stew, providing the meat that becomes tender during long gentle cooking.
Flour
Mixed with wine into a batter that thickens the stew liquid as it cooks.
Port wine
Liquid in the batter that adds depth and flavour to the stew.
Lean ham
Contributes savoury, salty meaty flavour to the stew during long cooking.
Onions
Break down during slow stewing, adding sweetness and savoury body to the liquid.

The step that matters

Let it boil well after adding the flour batter. Raw flour tastes pasty and can leave the sauce floury. Boiling the batter in the liquid fully cooks the starch, so the thickened stew tastes clean and smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, port wine, flour, mushroom, sauce, sugar, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, port wine, flour, mushroom, sauce, sugar, pepper. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes