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HARE, POTTED (from cold meat)
Take the remains of cold roast hare. Pick the meat from the bones, put it, freed from skin and sinew, into a mortar, and pound till it is a smooth paste. If there is a pound of meat, mix with it a salt-spoonful of salt, a salt-spoonful of pepper, half a salt-spoonful of mustard, a salt-spoonful of sugar, and two cloves, pounded; also a quarter of a pint of cold gravy and four ounces of clarified butter. When the ingredients are thoroughly blended, put the meat into a dish, make it smooth and even, and pour over it two ounces of melted butter. Keep it in a cool place until required for use. Time, about one hour to prepare. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the cold meat. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward Victorian potted meat: cooked hare pounded with fat and sealed under butter. The only technical demands are getting the paste genuinely smooth and understanding that the butter cap is a seal, not a garnish.
- The hinge: an airtight butter sealThe two ounces of melted butter poured over the top must cover the surface completely and touch the sides of the dish, with no meat breaking through. Any gap admits air and the paste discolours and spoils from that point outward.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt spoon held roughly a quarter teaspoon. So for a pound of meat: about 1/4 tsp each of salt, pepper and sugar, and a scant 1/8 tsp mustard powder.
- A quarter of a pintCassell's uses the imperial pint of 20 fl oz, so this is 5 fl oz, a generous half cup. Use well-flavoured jellied gravy or stock from the roast; anything thin will loosen the paste.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids and water removed, which is why it sets firm and keeps. Ordinary melted butter contains water and will not seal reliably, so clarify (or use ghee) for both the four ounces mixed in and the two ounces on top.
- Instead of the mortarA food processor does in a minute what pounding does in twenty, but pulse rather than run it, and add the gravy and soft butter gradually. Over-processed lean game turns pasty and gluey; some cooks stop while a little texture remains.
- The clovesTwo whole cloves pounded is about 1/8 tsp of ground clove, and it will dominate if you go further. Season the mixture, then taste it cold, since potted meat eaten chilled tastes noticeably blander than it does warm from the bowl.
- "A cool place"That meant a larder at perhaps 50F. Refrigerate it, and treat it as a fresh cooked-meat dish rather than a preserve: the butter seal slows oxidation but is no defence against pathogens in a modern sense. Eat within three or four days, and once the seal is broken, within two.
- If you have no hareThe method is identical for leftover roast rabbit, venison, duck or dark turkey meat. Hare is very lean and dark, so with a fattier bird you may want a little less butter in the paste.
- Yield and servingA pound of meat with the gravy and butter worked in gives well over a pint of paste, ample for five or six as a first course or a substantial spread. Let it come up a few degrees from fridge-cold before serving, with toast and something sharp such as pickled walnuts or redcurrant jelly.
Potting was England's standard answer to cooked meat that had to keep: pound it fine, work in fat, pack it tight to exclude air, and cap it with more fat. Recipes of this shape appear in English cookery books from the seventeenth century onward, well before refrigeration, and potted hare, beef and salmon were sold commercially by the Victorian period. What marks this particular entry is its place in the book: it sits among Cassell's numerous "from cold meat" recipes, a whole genre aimed at the middle-class household that had roasted a hare on Monday and needed the remains to reappear on Wednesday without looking like leftovers. Hare itself was a common enough sight on British tables, coming in from shooting and from game dealers in season, and its strong dark flesh takes the clove-and-mustard seasoning better than most. The costing of 6d. "exclusive of the cold meat" is the giveaway that thrift, not luxury, is the point.