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Hare, Civet Of
This dish may be made either with the remains of cold roast hare or with an uncooked hare. In the former case, the meat would require to be warmed for a few minutes only in the gravy; in the latter, it would have to be stewed with it. Divide the hare into small neat pieces, and fry them for a few minutes with half a pound of fat bacon, cut into dice, and two ounces of butter. When lightly browned, lift out the meat and bacon, and mix a tablespoonful of flour smoothly into the fat. Add gradually a pint and a half of stock, and put it into a stewpan with the bones of the hare, half a dozen small onions, half a blade of mace, a bay-leaf, a tea-spoonful of salt, a sprinkling of cayenne, a small lump of sugar, and a few mushrooms, or, in place of these, a tea-spoonful of mushroom-powder or a table-spoonful of ketchup. Simmer gently for an hour, then strain the gravy, put in the pieces of meat, with the bruised liver, a cupful of blood, and half a tumblerful of port. Simmer again as long as the meat requires it, and serve as hot as possible. The juice of half a lemon is by some considered an improvement. Time, altogether, about two hours. Probable cost of hare, from 3s. 6d. to 6s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A classic civet, thickened at the end with blood and port. Everything hinges on the temperature of that final stage.
- The blood must not boilOnce the liver and blood go in, keep the pan well below a simmer, despite the recipe's own instruction to "simmer again". Boiling curdles the blood into brown grit and the sauce breaks instead of turning glossy and dark.
- Getting the bloodA hare bought whole and unbled from a game dealer or butcher may yield most of the cupful (about 8 fl oz) called for, though often rather less; ask for it to be reserved with a splash of vinegar to stop it clotting. If none is available, the dish is still good finished with the liver alone plus a little more butter, though it will be paler and thinner.
- Hare and substitutesA hare of around 6-9 lb serves the six to eight the book claims. Rabbit works but is much leaner and milder; reduce the stewing time for the raw meat to about 45 minutes and expect a lighter sauce.
- Old measuresA pint and a half of stock is 30 fl oz British measure, roughly 3 3/4 US cups. "Half a tumblerful" of port is about 4-5 fl oz. A blade of mace is one strip of the dried casing of a nutmeg; a pinch of ground mace stands in.
- Mushroom-powder and ketchupBoth mean the savoury mushroom preparations of the period, not tomato ketchup. Use dried mushrooms ground to a powder, or the tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup the recipe specifies (or Worcestershire sauce).
- Fat baconHalf a pound of diced fat bacon means unsmoked streaky or salt pork. Modern smoked bacon will dominate the game; blanch it briefly in boiling water first if that is all you have.
- Timing the meat"As long as the meat requires" is upwards of an hour of gentle cooking for a raw hare — the book's total of about two hours leaves roughly that once the gravy has had its hour — but do that stewing in the strained gravy before the blood goes in. Add the blood and port only in the last few minutes, off a hard heat.
- ServingServe with redcurrant jelly, mashed potato or noodles, and something sharp — the lemon juice suggested at the end is worth the trouble against so much fat and port.
Civet is the French term for a game stew thickened with the animal's own blood, and the name is generally traced to cive, an old word for onion, the small whole onions here being characteristic of the dish. English cookery had its own version in jugged hare, cooked in a covered jar set in water and finished the same way, and Victorian dictionaries like Cassell's tended to print both. The recipe's opening line — that it can be made with the remains of a cold roast hare — is characteristic of the book's economy: a hare cost several shillings, a real outlay in a period when the same money bought several days' pay for a general servant, so nothing of it went unused, from the bones simmered in the gravy to the liver bruised into the sauce at the end.