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Jugged Hare

A hare stewed in a jar with onion, spices, lemon, and mushroom ketchup, served with forcemeat balls and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the hare and cut it into joints.

  2. Dredge the hare pieces with flour.

Stew

  1. Place the hare in a jar with the onion, cloves, allspice, black pepper, lemon slices, and lemon peel.

  2. Cover the jar tightly and place it in a saucepan of water up to the neck.

  3. Let it stew for 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the hare pieces and add mushroom ketchup and salt to the liquid.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then strain it over the hare.

  3. Serve with fried forcemeat balls and red currant jelly.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Flour
Dusting the joints helps the surface brown and lightly thickens the cooking liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the strained liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, slow-cooked meat.

The step that matters

Covering the jar tightly in a water bath. A tight seal and gentle surrounding water keep the liquid from boiling away and let the meat cook slowly and evenly. Boiling the jar directly would toughen the meat and reduce the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, clove, allspice, pepper, lemon, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, clove, allspice, pepper, lemon, mushroom, ketchup. 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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