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Haee or Rabbit Soup

A stew of hare or rabbit with bacon, onions, herbs, and spices, thickened with butter and flour or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Haee or Rabbit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cut hares in a pot with the bacon, onions, thyme, and parsley.

  2. Add pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and enough water to cover the ingredients.

Stew and thicken

  1. Stew gently for 3 hours.

  2. Remove the thyme and parsley before thickening the soup.

  3. Thicken the soup with butter and brown flour or red wine.

  4. Boil for a few more minutes and serve with the best parts of the hare.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Hares
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the broth as it renders into the pot.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften into the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel when stirred in at thickening.
Brown flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter and brown flour or red wine. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid to swell its starch and thicken evenly; added cold or too quickly it clumps. Stirring it in gradually and then boiling briefly fully thickens the broth and cooks out raw flour taste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, clove, butter, flour. 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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