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Soup

Hare Soup

A soup made by simmering vegetables, thickened with roux, and flavored with herbs, cayenne, port wine, red currant jelly, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the carrot, celery, onion, and turnip in 1 quart of water until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. Thicken the soup with brown roux until it is as thick as good cream.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the aromatic herbs, cayenne pepper, port wine, red-currant jelly, and lemon juice.

  2. Stir well and serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 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

Brown roux
Thickens the soup to a creamy body as it cooks.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity, wine-based richness to the broth.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruit note that balances the savoury base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the soup.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body through the vegetables pressed into the soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a wire sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through the sieve breaks them down into a smooth purée that gives the soup its body. Skipping or rushing this step leaves lumps and a thin, grainy texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, onion, turnip, pepper, port wine, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, onion, turnip, pepper, port wine, lemon. 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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