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Jugged Hare

A slow‑cooked rabbit or hare simmered with onion, pork fat, herbs, and stock, finished with sherry and served with fried hominy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Skin, clean, and joint the rabbit or hare.

  2. Cut the back into two pieces and sever every joint.

  3. Fry the sliced onion in hot dripping until pale brown.

  4. Add the meat, seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, and cook for 10 minutes, turning often.

Layer and simmer

  1. In an agate‑iron saucepan, layer chopped fat salt pork, sprinkle with onion, parsley, and paprika.

  2. Place the hare pieces on top, cover with another layer of chopped pork and onion, and add fresh tomatoes if desired.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of cold weak stock that has boiled with a stalk of celery, then cover tightly.

  4. Set the saucepan in a vessel of cold water and bring slowly to a boil.

  5. Maintain this for 3 hours or until the meat is tender.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the meat and thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  2. Stir in currant jelly and lemon juice, simmer for 1 minute.

  3. Pour in a glass of sherry and pour the sauce over the meat.

  4. Garnish with triangles of fried hominy.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit or hare
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat and later thickens the gravy as it browns and binds with liquid.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat and flavour into the pan, enriching the meat and sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the dripping.
Weak stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently tenderises the meat and forms the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and gloss to the sauce, balancing its savoury notes.

The step that matters

Bringing the saucepan slowly to a boil in a water bath. Gentle, gradual heating keeps the liquid from boiling too hard, so the meat becomes tender in long, slow simmering without toughening or drying out.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, pepper, flour, pork, parsley, celery):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, pepper, flour, pork, parsley, celery. 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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