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Hare Soup

A hearty soup made with hare bones, vegetables, herbs, and port wine, thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Hare Soup

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Melt the butter or fat in a stewpan.

  2. Add the hare bones, sliced vegetables, and herbs, and cook until browned.

  3. Pour in the stock, add salt and peppercorns, and simmer gently for about 3 hours.

  4. Strain the soup and pound the meat in a mortar.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the meat through a fine sieve, then return it to the stewpan with the stock.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the wine and cornflour mixed smoothly together.

  3. Stir and cook for a few minutes, season to taste, and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hare bones
Give the soup its deep, rich meaty flavour when browned and simmered.
Second stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Butter or good fat
Carries the browning of the bones and vegetables, adding richness.
Cornflour
Thickens the soup to a smooth, lightly body-filled texture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Pounded hare meat
Returned to the stock after sieving, it thickens the soup and adds body.

The step that matters

Mixing the cornflour smoothly before adding it. Cornflour dropped into hot liquid clumps as its starch grains swell unevenly. Mixing it smooth first, then bringing the soup to a boil before stirring, lets the starch disperse and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, 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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