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HARE CUTLETS (a German recipe)
The back of the hare, which is the best part of it, may be divided into cutlets, and fried. The rest may be used for soup, or served some other way. Leave the bones in the cutlets, trim them neatly, and rub into them some salt, pepper, and pounded mace. Mix a dessert-spoonful of finely-minced sweet herbs, and half a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-rind, with a quarter of a pint of bread-crumbs. Dip the cutlets in egg, and afterwards in the seasoned bread-crumbs, and fry them in hot butter. Put them in a hot dish, squeeze the juice of a lemon over them, and garnish the dish with slices of hard-boiled egg and pickled gherkins. Time, from twelve to fifteen minutes to fry the cutlets. Probable cost of hare, from 3s. 6d. to 6s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward crumbed-and-fried cutlet, but it depends on getting a hare's saddle cut properly and on not overcooking lean game. A few of the measures need translating.
- The cut"The back of the hare" is the saddle: the loin either side of the backbone, from the end of the ribs to the hips. Chop across the spine into short chops about an inch thick, four to six per saddle, leaving the vertebra in as directed.
- Hare or rabbitA whole hare is a special order from a game dealer in most places. Farmed rabbit works with the same method, though it is paler and milder; two rabbit saddles give roughly the same number of cutlets as one hare.
- Old measuresA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons. A quarter of a pint of breadcrumbs is 5 imperial fluid ounces, near enough two-thirds of a US cup of fresh crumbs.
- Pounded maceGround mace off the shelf is the equivalent; use about a quarter teaspoon for a saddle's worth. Mace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg, and it appears often in Victorian game seasoning.
- Sweet herbsIn Victorian usage that generally means parsley with thyme and marjoram, sometimes a little savory. Chop them very fine so they sit in the crumb coat rather than falling out of it.
- The fryingTwelve to fifteen minutes is right for bone-in chops of this thickness, but only over moderate heat. Butter alone will darken before the time is up; use clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, and turn once.
- DonenessHare and rabbit are best taken to fully cooked through, not left pink in the way a venison loin might be. The meat is very lean, so cook it steadily and get it out of the pan as soon as it firms.
- ServingSufficient for three or four, as stated. The lemon juice and the gherkin-and-egg garnish are doing the work of a sauce, so serve something plain alongside: buttered potatoes, or the red cabbage that would accompany the dish in Germany.
Cassell's marks this German perhaps because breaded cutlets of hare suggest a German and Austrian manner of treating the animal, in which the saddle, among the more tender parts of a hare, is cut into chops, crumbed and fried while the tougher legs and forequarter go to a stew or a soup. The pickled gherkins and sliced hard-boiled egg are the giveaway: that sharp, vinegary garnish in place of a gravy is a Central European habit rather than an English one, and it suits hare, whose dark, strong meat wants acidity. The cost given here, three and six to six shillings, was a serious sum for a working household. The instinct to divide one animal across several dishes, cutlets today and soup tomorrow, is characteristic of the period's cookery writing, which assumed a whole carcass arriving at the kitchen door rather than portions bought as needed.