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Hare, Baked
Instead of hashing hare, it may be warmed up as follows. Take the remains of cold hare and pick the meat from the bones. Divide it into small neat pieces. Cut half a pound of fat bacon into dice. Fry these in butter till slightly browned, and put them at the bottom of a deep pie-dish. Strew a handful of finely-grated bread-crumbs over them, and on this place the pieces of hare, seasoned with pepper and salt. Cut some button-mushrooms into halves, stew them partially, and lay them on the hare, and over them another layer of bread-crumbs. Distribute little pieces of butter over the surface, and enough broth to prevent the whole getting dry and hard. This should be added in small quantities, as required. Put the dish into a tin filled with water, and heat in the oven. If mushrooms are not to be had, supply their place with mashed potatoes, and add a little ketchup to the broth which is used to moisten the hare. Time, three-quarters of an hour to bake. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the cold hare. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A leftover dish rather than a roast: it assumes you already have a cooked hare in the larder and want it on the table again without hashing it. Everything here rests on gentle, moist reheating.
- The water bath is the point"Put the dish into a tin filled with water" means stand the pie-dish in a roasting tin of hot water, a bain-marie. Already-cooked hare is lean and dries to string over direct oven heat; the water caps the temperature and keeps the meat from tightening.
- Oven settingNo temperature or oven term is given in this entry. A moderate oven, roughly 325-350F, for the stated three-quarters of an hour should bring the dish through; you are heating, not cooking, so judge by the centre being hot rather than by colour.
- Fat baconHalf a pound of unsmoked fat streaky bacon or salt pork, cut into dice. Modern smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the hare; if that is all you have, use less. Frying it in butter is for flavour and rendered fat, not browning it hard.
- KetchupIn a book of this date ketchup usually means mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin dark savoury condiment, rather than the tomato sort. Tomato ketchup is sweet and will read quite differently; a dash of mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire sauce is nearer the likely intention.
- Broth, added in stagesThe instruction to add it "in small quantities, as required" matters. Crumbs drink liquid, and too much at the start gives a sodden layer at the base; start with a few spoonfuls and top up once during baking.
- MushroomsButton mushrooms "partially stewed" means a brief cook in butter or broth to drive off their water before they go in, so they do not flood the dish. Where mushrooms cannot be had, the recipe substitutes mashed potatoes and adds ketchup to the broth to make up the savour.
- Sourcing the hareHare is a game dealer or online order in most places, and it is seasonal. The dish works with the remains of a roast rabbit, or cooked venison or wood pigeon, though all are milder than hare.
- Yield and costFour or five people, as stated. The "probable cost, 1s." is a Victorian shorthand for the bacon, crumbs, butter and mushrooms only, and tells you the hare itself was assumed to be already paid for.
Cassell's belongs to a generation of household dictionaries organised as much around thrift as around cookery, and the run of entries for cold meat re-dressed in some new form is one of its most characteristic features. Hare reached town kitchens through game dealers in autumn and winter, and a jugged or roasted hare fed a family once and then had to appear again in another guise, which is why the entry opens by offering itself as an alternative to hashing. The layered construction here, bacon and crumbs below, meat and mushrooms above, butter and broth to moisten, is essentially the logic of a scallop or a gratin applied to game, and the water bath is the same device used for custards: an oven with no thermostat could be made gentle only by putting water between it and the food.