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Hare, Haricot Of
When the best parts of the hare have been used, the remainder may be cooked as follows. Divide the hare into small, neat joints. Fry these for three or four minutes in a little butter, then put them into a larger stewpan, with a sprig of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a shallot, finely minced, two turnips and two carrots, cut into small pieces, three or four cloves, and a little pepper and salt. Mix a little flour very smoothly with the butter in which the hare was fried, let it brown lightly, then add gradually a pint and a half of good stock. Let the sauce boil a minute or two, then pour it over the hare, etc., and simmer gently for an hour. A dessert-spoonful of chilli vinegar, or the same quantity of lemon-juice may be added, if liked. Put the meat into a hot dish, pour the sauce round it, and serve with toasted sippets. Probable cost, 8d., exclusive of the hare. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A brown stew built from the leftover joints of a hare — the shoulders, neck and ribs left after the saddle and legs have been roasted. Everything hangs on long, slow simmering of tough, lean meat.
- Haricot means nothing to do with beansIn Victorian cookery books haricot is a brown stew of meat with root vegetables; the name is usually traced to the Old French harigoter, to cut up small, though the derivation is not certain. No haricot beans are involved, and none need be added.
- Sourcing the hareWild hare comes from a game dealer, usually whole and jointed to order; the shooting season in Britain runs roughly from August into late winter, and sale was long restricted in spring and early summer. A hare of 6–8 lb is typical. Rabbit can be substituted, though it is milder and will come tender sooner than an hour.
- Simmer time is a floor, not a ceilingAn hour will do for the forequarters of a young hare, but an older animal wants 90 minutes to two hours at a bare tremble. Test by whether the meat pulls from the bone; hare toughens if boiled hard, so keep the surface barely moving.
- The roux is the hingeBrown the flour in the frying butter before any stock goes in — the recipe says lightly — and add the stock gradually. A pale, unbrowned roux gives a thin, floury gravy that an hour of simmering will not fix.
- MeasuresA pint and a half of stock is 30 fl oz imperial, about 850 ml or 3½ US cups. A dessertspoon is roughly 2 teaspoons. "A little flour" for this quantity of liquid means about 1½ oz (40 g) against a similar weight of butter.
- Chilli vinegarA Victorian storecupboard staple: vinegar steeped with dried chillies, added at the end for sharpness. Any hot pepper vinegar works, or the lemon juice the recipe offers as an alternative. Add it after the simmer, not before, or the brightness cooks away.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread, toasted or fried in butter, tucked round the edge of the dish. They are there to soak up gravy and are worth making rather than skipping.
- YieldThree or four servings as the book says. The "probable cost, 8d." is expressly exclusive of the hare, covering the vegetables, stock and butter.
Cassell's belongs to a tradition of household cookery in which nothing edible left a kitchen, and this entry reads as a second-day recipe: the bony forequarters are braised down with roots and a brown sauce once the better joints have been dealt with. Hare was a common enough dish in Victorian Britain, though the game laws made it a slightly fraught one, and much of what reached town markets came through licensed dealers or, less officially, through poachers. The "haricot" label had by this date drifted a long way from any single French original; English cookery writers used it loosely for almost any brown stew with turnips and carrots cut small. Chilli vinegar, offered here as an optional finish, was a fashionable nineteenth-century bottled condiment, sold ready-made and also kept up at home in a stoppered jar.