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HARE, HASHED (another way)
When no gravy remains from the previous day's dinner, cut the hare into neat pieces, and put the bones and trimmings aside for use. Fry three small onions and an ounce of bacon, cut into dice, in a little butter, take them out when done, and mix a table-spoonful of flour very smoothly with the fat. Add gradually a pint of water, a blade of mace, a bunch of savoury herbs, a bay-leaf, a sprig of parsley, five or six chives, the bones and trimmings, and a little salt and pepper. Simmer gently for an hour after the gravy has boiled. Strain the gravy, put in the pieces of hare and a table-spoonful of red-currant jelly. Boil for five minutes, and serve on a hot dish, with toasted sippets round. Probable cost, exclusive of the cold hare, 6d Sufficient for three or four persons.
A second-day dish for the remains of a roast or jugged hare, building a fresh gravy from the carcass rather than reheating yesterday's. The whole point is the one-hour bone stock; everything after it takes ten minutes.
- The hinge: five minutes, no moreThe hare is already cooked. Once the strained gravy goes back on the heat the meat is only being warmed through and glazed — hold it at a bare simmer for five minutes. Longer and roast hare, which is lean and close-grained, turns dry and stringy.
- Imperial measuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, so use 2 1/2 US cups of water. An ounce of bacon is a rasher or two, cut into small dice; streaky or a piece of unsmoked pancetta both work.
- Blade of maceA blade is one strip of the lacy aril around a nutmeg, not ground mace. If you only have ground, a scant pinch is plenty — it is assertive and easy to overdo in a pint of gravy.
- Bunch of savoury herbsVictorian shorthand for a small tied bundle of herbs, usually some combination of thyme, parsley stalks and marjoram, here reinforced by the separate bay leaf and parsley sprig. Tie it so it lifts out cleanly, though the gravy is strained anyway.
- SippetsTriangles of bread toasted or fried in butter, arranged point-outward round the rim of the dish. Cut them from a firm white loaf and add them at the table; they soften within a minute of meeting the gravy.
- Red-currant jellyNot a garnish but a seasoning — the acid and sugar cut the iron-heavy flavour of hare. Stir it in off the boil until dissolved and taste before serving; commercial jellies vary a good deal in sweetness.
- Sourcing the hareHare is a game-dealer or online butcher item in Britain and rarely sold at all in the United States, where farmed rabbit is the usual stand-in. Rabbit is much milder, so go lighter on the currant jelly. In Britain the sale of hare is restricted over the spring and summer months (and Scotland has a close season), so it is not generally on offer in high summer.
- Yield and costThree or four servings, as stated. The sixpence covers only the onions, bacon, flour and jelly — the book assumes the hare itself was paid for the day before.
Cassell's gives hashed hare twice because reworking cold roast game was routine domestic economy, not a novelty: a hare is a large animal for a small household, and the second appearance at table was expected. What distinguishes this version is that it refuses the shortcut of yesterday's gravy and rebuilds a stock from the bones and trimmings in an hour, which is really a small game fumet dressed in English clothes. The pairing of hare with red-currant jelly is long established in British cookery and is generally traced to the older practice of serving sharp fruit sauces with dark, strong-tasting meats, the same logic that puts rowan or cranberry beside venison. Sippets — the word predates the toast triangles by centuries and simply means a small sop of bread — mark the dish as belonging to a tradition of gravy-heavy made dishes served in a shallow dish rather than plated dry.