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Forcemeat for Hare
Parboil the liver of the hare, if sound, and mince it finely; also chop a quarter of a pound of suet and rather less of lean bacon, which should be shredded fine, that the forcemeat may not require to be pounded in a mortar. Mix these ingredients together, and add six ounces of bread-crumbs, a dessert-spoonful of parsley, a little thyme and marjoram mixed, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Bind with two or three yolks of eggs, which must be well beaten before being used, and stuff the inside of the hare with the forcemeat.
A Victorian stuffing built around the hare's own liver, meant to be packed into the body cavity before roasting. The proportions are generous enough for a large hare, so scale down for farmed rabbit.
- The hinge: keep it looseThe whole point of shredding the suet and bacon finely is to avoid pounding the mixture to a paste in a mortar. A forcemeat pounded smooth turns dense and sliceable; left crumbly it stays light and absorbs the roasting juices. Mix with a fork, not a food processor.
- "If sound"That qualifier is doing real work. Discard any liver that is discoloured, spotted, or smells off, and leave the forcemeat unlivered rather than risk it. Parboiling means 5-8 minutes in simmering water, until firm enough to mince cleanly.
- MeasuresA dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons. Six ounces of breadcrumbs is roughly 3 cups if fresh and soft, considerably less by volume if dry; fresh crumbs from stale bread are the likelier reading of an unqualified 'bread-crumbs' here.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher, chopped fine while cold, or the shredded packaged sort. Cold unsalted butter cut in small dice works as a substitute, though it melts out faster and gives a slightly greasier result.
- Bacon'Lean bacon' means bacon with little fat on it, the recipe's fat coming from the suet. Nineteenth-century bacon was often unsmoked (green) and more saltily cured than modern sweet-cured breakfast bacon; if using a heavily cured or sugared bacon, cut back the added salt.
- Hare and rabbitHare is dark, strongly flavoured and rarely stocked outside game dealers. A farmed rabbit of 3-4 lb is smaller and much milder, so scale the quantity down and adjust the thyme, marjoram and nutmeg to taste.
- Cooking the stuffed animalStuffing inside a carcass heats slowly. The centre of the forcemeat needs to reach 165F, which usually means checking with a thermometer rather than trusting the meat's own timing. Any surplus can be baked separately in a small dish for 30-40 minutes at 350F.
- YieldAs written, enough to fill a good-sized hare, with some likely left over.
Forcemeat, from the French farce (a stuffing, and the same root as the theatrical sense of something inserted), was a whole department of nineteenth-century English cookery, and Victorian cookery books list numerous versions keyed to particular meats. Stuffings were commonly matched to the animal they went into, which is why the hare's own liver anchors this one and why the aromatics are the strong-scented dry herbs, thyme and marjoram, with nutmeg to meet the gaminess head-on. Hare was a common enough dish in Victorian Britain, its blood traditionally saved to thicken the gravy and its liver put to use here, in the household economy that treated every part of a bought or shot animal as accounted for. The instruction that the ingredients be shredded finely enough to avoid the mortar is a small mercy: pounding forcemeat by hand was laborious work.