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Hare or Rabbit Soup

A hearty soup made from hare or rabbit, onions, mace, celery, herbs, blood, red wine, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Hare or Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut up and wash the hare or rabbits, saving all the blood.

  2. Strain the blood through a sieve.

Simmer the soup

  1. In a soup pot, combine the meat, onions, mace, celery, parsley, marjoram, basil, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Pour in 3 quarts of water and simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  3. Add the strained blood and simmer for another hour without boiling.

  4. Strain the soup, pound half the meat in a mortar, and stir it back into the soup to thicken.

  5. Cut the remaining meat into small pieces and add to the soup.

  6. Stir in the red wine and currant jelly, and simmer for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with optional force‑meat balls for added flavor.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare or rabbits
Provide the meat that flavours the broth and is partly pounded to thicken it.
Blood (in the method)
Added near the end to thicken the soup and give it a richer, darker body.
Onions
Release sweet, savoury flavour into the broth during the long gentle simmer.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the wine and the savoury broth.

The step that matters

Add the strained blood and simmer without boiling. Blood thickens by coagulating when heated, and boiling can curdle it into grainy lumps, so it should be stirred in and kept just below a boil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, clove, celery, parsley, marjoram, basil):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, clove, celery, parsley, marjoram, basil. 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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