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Artificial Hare Soup

A soup made by simmering bullock's heart with onions, spices, and broth, then pounding and thickening with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Artificial Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Obtain a bullock's heart and clean it by removing the pipes and outer skin.

  2. Slice the heart and place it in a covered earthen jar.

  3. Add onions (one stuck with cloves), mace, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, bread, and butter mixed with flour.

  4. Cover the ingredients with water.

  5. Seal the jar with a lid and a paste to prevent steam from escaping.

Simmer

  1. Place the jar in a pot of boiling water, ensuring the water nearly reaches the top of the jar, and simmer for several hours.

  2. Keep adding boiling water to the pot as it evaporates.

Finish the soup

  1. Once the meat is tender, pound it with the bread in a mortar until fine.

  2. Occasionally add broth made from fresh beef while pounding.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve and add the cooking liquid from the heart.

  4. Add enough beef broth to achieve the desired soup quantity.

  5. Bring to a boil and season with cayenne and salt.

  6. If the soup is not thick enough, add flour and butter until it reaches a creamy consistency.

  7. Stir in sugar and a splash of port wine.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bullock's heart
Provides the meat and rich flavour that form the body of the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
Bread
Thickens the soup when pounded to a fine texture.
Butter and flour
Enrich the soup and add body to reach a creamy consistency.
Port wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness and aroma at the end.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar and keeping it simmering. If steam escapes or the pot boils dry, the heart cooks unevenly and the broth concentrates or scorches. Keeping the water level topped up and the seal tight holds a gentle, steady heat for slow tenderising.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, bread, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, bread, butter, flour, sugar. 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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