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Hare, Braised
Stuff the hare with a suitable forcemeat (see HARE, FORCEMEAT FOR). Sew it up securely, and lay slices of bacon on it, put it into a braisingpan, or stewpan, with two finely-minced shallots, a scraped carrot, four button-mushrooms, or, in place of these, a tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup, and a pint of good stock. Place three ounces of butter on the hare, put the lid on the pan, and simmer gently for three hours or more. Strain the gravy, thicken it with a dessert-spoonful of flour, mixed smoothly with a little cold water, add a glass of sherry, Madeira, or claret, simmer a few minutes longer, and serve. Send red currant jelly to table with the hare. Probable cost of hare, 3s. 6d. to 6s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A long, gentle braise for a lean, dark-fleshed animal. Everything here depends on keeping the liquid below a simmer and on getting enough fat into meat that has almost none of its own.
- Never let it boilHare muscle is very lean and tightens fast; a rolling boil in three hours gives you dry shreds in a good sauce. Keep the surface barely trembling, or set the covered pan in a 300F oven, which holds the temperature more reliably than a burner.
- Sourcing the hareHare is not a supermarket item in most of the English-speaking world; order from a game dealer, where it usually arrives skinned and jointed or whole, often frozen. A young hare (leveret) will be tender in three hours; an old one may need four. Rabbit substitutes, but it is milder and paler and needs about half the time.
- Bacon and butter are structuralThe bacon slices and the three ounces of butter are barding, not seasoning. Use fatty streaky bacon or thin sheets of pork back fat laid over the saddle and legs; without them the exposed meat dries out well before the legs are done.
- MeasuresA dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons. A "glass" of sherry or claret in this period means a wineglassful, conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz. A pint of stock in a British book of this date is 20 fl oz.
- Mushroom ketchupThe Victorian condiment is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, not tomato ketchup. It is still made commercially in Britain; a tablespoon of it, or the four fresh button mushrooms, does the same job of deepening the gravy. Failing both, a teaspoon of soy plus a little dried mushroom soaked in the stock is close in effect.
- Sewing the cavityButcher's twine and a trussing needle. If that is more than you want to do, pack the forcemeat into a small loaf tin and bake it separately at 350F for 35-40 minutes, and braise the hare unstuffed; the meat cooks more evenly that way in any case.
- Finishing the gravyStrain, then skim hard before thickening. There will be a great deal of butter and bacon fat floating on it, and the flour slurry will lock that fat into the sauce if you leave it. Give the wine at least five minutes' simmering to lose its rawness.
- Yield and serviceSix to eight, as stated, if the hare is a large one and the meal has other courses; four generous modern portions is more realistic. The book assumes redcurrant jelly on the table.
Hare was the great winter game of the Victorian kitchen, and Cassell's gives it a whole cluster of entries because a hare arrived at the house whole, in fur, and had to be dealt with from first principles: hung, skinned, its blood saved for jugging, its liver worked into the forcemeat. The redcurrant jelly and the glass of sherry are the standard English answer to strong dark meat, the same pairing that goes with venison and mutton, and it is generally traced to the older practice of serving game with sharp fruit preserves. The costing in shillings tells you the dish sat at the comfortable end of middle-class cookery: a hare fed eight, provided somebody in the household knew how to prepare one.