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Hare Pepper
Cut the hare into small convenient-sized joints. Fry these in hot butter until nicely browned, and with them one onion, sliced, and three ounces of bacon, cut into dice. Take out the hare, etc., while you brown two table-spoonfuls of flour in the butter. Add gradually a pint and a half of water or stock, and, when it is smoothly mixed, put in the pieces of hare, six or eight peppercorns, the rind of half a lemon, four or five cloves, and the gravy from the dish in which the hare lay. Simmer gently for an hour or more. Put the pieces of hare into a dish, strain the gravy over them, and garnish with sliced lemon. When the hindmost part of the hare has been already served, the inferior joints are excellent cooked thus. The head should be split in two and the liver cut into two or three pieces. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward brown stew built on a flour-and-butter roux, meant to use up the forequarters after the saddle and legs have been served. The technique needs no updating; the shopping does.
- The hinge: brown the flour, not the meat, at the endThe two tablespoons of flour go into the fat after the hare and bacon come out, and should be cooked to a nutty brown before any liquid joins them. Add the stock a little at a time and whisk smooth, or the sauce will stay lumpy however long it simmers.
- Sourcing hareWild hare is sold by game dealers in autumn and winter, usually whole and sometimes already skinned; a whole hare is generally in the region of 5-8 lb. Farmed rabbit works in its place but is much leaner and milder, and will usually be tender well before the hare would be.
- "The gravy from the dish in which the hare lay"Most likely the juices, and any blood, collected under a hung or jointed hare, which darken and thicken the sauce. Modern hare is rarely sold with its blood; skip it, or ask the dealer to reserve it. If blood is used, stir it in off the boil at the end, as it will curdle in a rolling simmer.
- Timing"An hour or more" is optimistic for the shoulders and ribs of an older wild hare. Expect 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a bare simmer, and judge by the meat pulling from the bone rather than the clock.
- Lemon rindPare the rind thinly with no white pith, which turns bitter over a long simmer. Take it out with the peppercorns and cloves when you strain.
- Head and liverBoth are optional now. If you use the liver, add it in the last 10 minutes only; longer and it goes grainy and chalky.
- BaconThree ounces of diced bacon here stands in for fat streaky bacon, closer to unsmoked pancetta or lardons than to thin breakfast rashers. Heavily smoked bacon will dominate the sauce.
- Yield and costThree to four servings, as stated. The "probable cost, 2s." belongs to the book's own period and has no useful modern equivalent.
The name is often said to be a translation of the German Hasenpfeffer, a jugged-hare stew in which "pepper" is generally taken to refer less to a heavy hand with peppercorns than to the dark, spiced, blood-thickened sauce. Cassell's places it in the practical spirit that runs through the whole dictionary: the saddle and hind legs of a hare were the prized roasting joints, and this recipe exists to make the shoulders, ribs, head and offal worth carrying to the table a second day. The long simmer with cloves, lemon rind and peppercorns is the standard Victorian treatment for strong-flavoured dark meat, where the aromatics are meant to cut the muskiness of a hung hare rather than to perfume the dish.