Hare Soup
Cut up a pair of hares into neat, small pieces; take all the nicest bits and fry them a light brown. Have a pot of stock, and into it put the inferior pieces of the hare, two onions, a carrot, a head of celery, some parsley and thyme, a blade of mace, a clove or two, salt and pepper. Let this all boil till the meat falls off the bones, then pass it through a sieve. Put the soup back into the pot, use some of it to make gravy over the bits of hare in the frying pan, then turn the contents of the frying pan into the soup pot, let it simmer until the meat is tender, then slightly thicken the soup with a little browned flour.
A two-stage soup: a long-boiled stock from the tough cuts, and the good cuts browned and finished in it. The original assumes you have a stockpot going and a butcher who sells hares whole, neither of which is a given now.
- The haresA dressed hare is commonly 5-7 lb on the bone, so a pair makes a great deal of soup; one hare, or two rabbits, should serve six to eight. Hare is dark, strongly flavoured and lean, rabbit much milder. Order from a game dealer or online butcher and ask for it skinned and jointed.
- Which are the nicest bitsThe saddle (loin) and hind legs are the pieces worth frying and serving in the finished soup. Forelegs, ribcage, neck and any trimmings are the "inferior pieces" that go into the stock and are discarded after sieving.
- How much stockThe original gives none. For one hare, about 3 quarts of light beef or chicken stock, enough to cover the bones and vegetables by a couple of inches. Expect it to reduce by a quarter over the long boil.
- A blade of maceOne blade is a shard of the lacy aril that covers a nutmeg. Substitute about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace.
- Timing"Till the meat falls off the bones" is 2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer for the stock stage. The fried pieces then need only 30-45 minutes in the strained soup; hare loin is lean and goes stringy if boiled hard, so keep it just trembling.
- Passing through a sieveMost likely straining out the spent bones and vegetables rather than pushing them through into a puree, since the strained liquid is returned to the pot as 'soup'. A conical sieve or colander lined with muslin gives a clean body.
- Deglazing the panThe instruction to "use some of it to make gravy over the bits of hare in the frying pan" is a deglaze: pour a ladle or two of the hot strained soup into the pan, scrape up the browned residue, and tip it all back. This is where most of the colour and flavour lives.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or a low oven until it is the colour of sand. It thickens less than raw flour but adds colour and a nutty edge. Two tablespoons slaked with a little cold stock will lightly thicken 3 quarts, which is the 'slight' thickening the recipe asks for; add it at the end and simmer five minutes to cook out.
- ServingPort or claret stirred in off the heat, and redcurrant jelly at the table, are usual accompaniments to hare, though this recipe calls for neither. Skim any fat before serving.
Hare soup was a fixture of British and American cookery books through the nineteenth century, when hare was cheap game rather than a delicacy, and it belongs to the family of "brown" soups built on long-boiled bones and browned flour. Its richer relation is jugged hare, where the animal is stewed in a covered jug and thickened with its own blood; this version skips the blood entirely, which makes it far more approachable. The two-stage method here, sacrificing the poor cuts to the stock so the good ones can be browned and served whole, is often said to have been usual for game in period kitchens, where nothing was wasted and the difference between a saddle and a neck was well understood. Hare has largely fallen out of general use in Britain and the United States since the mid-twentieth century, and finding one now usually means a specialist dealer and a seasonal wait.