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Hare, Boned
Bone the hare (see BONE, TO), then stuff the inside with a forcemeat made of bread-crumbs, minced ham, chopped parsley, and plenty of pepper and salt. Make the hare into as good a shape as possible; bake in a moderate oven for two hours, basting frequently; dish up, and cover with thick brown gravy that has had half a pot of red currant jelly and a glassful of port wine mixed in with it. Garnish with tiny forcemeat balls and cut lemon.
A boned roast hare is straightforward cooking hung on one demanding piece of butchery. Everything else in the method is about keeping a very lean animal from drying out over two hours.
- The hinge: fat, not timeHare has almost no intramuscular fat, and a boned carcass has lost the protection of the bones as well. Bard it with bacon or sheets of pork fat and baste every fifteen minutes, or the meat will be grey and stringy however good the gravy is.
- A moderate oven350F/175C. If the hare is well barded you can start at 400F for fifteen minutes to colour it, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- Two hours, checkedTwo hours suits a large hare, boned, stuffed and rolled to a thick cylinder. A smaller animal or a rabbit will be done well before that; work to an internal temperature of about 160-165F at the centre of the stuffing and rest it fifteen minutes.
- Boning the hareThe book cross-references its own entry because this is the skilled part. A game dealer will do it if asked; otherwise work from the back, keeping the skin-side flesh intact, and tie the stuffed body at intervals with string to hold the shape the recipe asks for.
- The forcemeat needs a binderBreadcrumbs, ham and parsley alone will crumble when the joint is carved. Victorian forcemeats commonly included shredded suet and a beaten egg; add both, roughly 4 oz crumbs, 4 oz minced ham, 2 oz suet and one egg for a hare this size.
- "Half a pot" of jellyGenuinely imprecise, since jelly pots varied in size. Start with three or four tablespoons and taste; the gravy should be savoury with a sweet-sharp edge, not a sauce.
- A glassful of portA wine glass in this period is about 2 fl oz, not the 6 oz a modern glass holds. Add it to the gravy and let it simmer a few minutes to lose the raw spirit.
- Forcemeat ballsMake them from the same mixture, rolled small, and fry or bake them separately rather than around the joint, where they would sit in the fat and collapse.
- Substituting rabbitFarmed rabbit is milder, paler and leaner still. It works, but reduce the roasting time considerably and expect to lean harder on the port and jelly for depth.
- YieldA boned hare of this size serves six to eight, carved across the roll in thick slices so each has a band of forcemeat.
Hare was the grandest of the everyday British game animals, and Victorian cookery books devote pages to it: jugged, roasted, potted, made into soup. Boning and stuffing it was the show-off treatment, turning an awkward long-limbed carcass into a neat rolled joint that could be carved at table without a struggle, and it belongs to the same tradition as boned turkey and galantines of fowl. The redcurrant jelly and port are the standard English accompaniment to any dark game meat, a pairing so fixed by the nineteenth century that no explanation was thought necessary. The recipe also assumes a household that received whole hares in the fur, hung them, and had a cook capable of the knife work, which is why the instruction is compressed to a single cross-reference. Hare is still seasonal and still sold whole, but in most places it now comes from a game dealer rather than the back door.