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Superlatiye Hare Soup

A hearty soup made from hare, ham, onions, herbs, beef stock, and port wine, finished with crumbled French rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Superlatiye Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large soup pot, combine the hare joints, ham, onions, mace, thyme, marjoram, parsley, and beef stock.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil and let it simmer for 2 hours, or longer if the hare is old.

  3. Strain the soup and finely pound the ham and meat from the hare.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stew pan, combine the pounded meat with the strained liquid, crumbled rolls, and port wine.

  2. Simmer for 20 minutes, then strain through a sieve.

  3. Return to the stove and heat until very hot, but do not boil.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, then serve immediately.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 flavour and, pounded, body to the soup.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock and the pounded meat.
French rolls
Crumbled and simmered, they thicken the soup and give it a smooth body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that balances the savoury stock.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavours of the soup.

The step that matters

Do not let the soup boil after adding the pounded meat and port. Once the soup is strained and enriched, boiling can make it cloudy and cause the proteins to toughen and separate, so it should only be heated until very hot.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, thyme, marjoram, parsley, beef, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, thyme, marjoram, parsley, beef, port wine. 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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