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Hare, Broiled
Season the legs and shoulders of a cold roast hare with salt and cayenne, broil them over a clear fire, rub some cold butter over them, and serve as quickly as possible on a hot dish. Time, five minutes to broil. Sufficient for three persons.
This is a leftovers dish: joints from a hare already roasted, reheated over fire and finished with butter. The whole point is speed, so have the plates hot before the meat goes near the heat.
- A clear fireMeans a coal or wood fire burned down to steady, flameless heat — the equivalent of coals with a light ash coating on a charcoal grill, or a ridged pan over medium-high heat. Under a domestic broiler, use the top rack at full heat and turn once.
- Five minutes means five minutesThe meat is already cooked; you are colouring the outside and warming the inside. Longer and hare, which is very lean and close-grained, dries to string. Two to three minutes a side is plenty for legs, less for shoulders.
- Sourcing hareWild hare is sold by game dealers in season and is much darker and stronger-tasting than rabbit. A whole hare of around 6-8 lb would plausibly yield the three portions stated from its legs and shoulders. Farmed rabbit works but is far milder, so watch the timing closely.
- CayenneCayenne was the standard seasoning for "devilled" dishes, and period devil recipes often call for it liberally. A scant quarter teaspoon rubbed over the four joints, with a good pinch of salt, is in the spirit of it; taste and adjust.
- The cold butterRubbing hard butter over the hot meat is a deliberate step, not a garnish; it melts over the joints and carries the salt and cayenne with it. Hard butter straight from the cold is what you can actually rub over the surface, which is presumably why the recipe specifies it.
- ServingThree portions from the four joints of one hare. Traditional accompaniments would be toast, mustard, or a sharp jelly such as redcurrant or rowan; a green salad works better for a modern lunch.
Broiled hare belongs to the large Victorian family of dishes built on yesterday's roast, sitting alongside devilled kidneys, devilled bones and grilled turkey legs — all ways of making cold meat presentable at breakfast or supper in households where nothing was thrown away and a hare was too costly to waste. The salt-and-cayenne rub marks it as a mild devil, a treatment generally traced to the late eighteenth century and firmly established in British cookery by the time Cassell's was compiled. Hare itself was a game-law animal, taken by the landed and sold through poulterers and dealers, and it appears constantly in nineteenth-century cookbooks: jugged, roasted, potted, made into soup, and then, on the second day, broiled. The instruction to serve "as quickly as possible on a hot dish" reflects a period of long passages between kitchen and dining room, when the hot dish and the covered plate were what stood between a cook and a lukewarm reputation.