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HARE, ROAST (another way)
Truss and stuff the hare as in the last recipe. Put it down before a clear fire for a few minutes, to set the flesh, then cover it all over with slices of fat pork or bacon. Roast it the usual time, and send good brown gravy and red currant jelly to table with it. Time, one and a quarter to two hours. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. to 6s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A spit-roasting instruction adapted for the oven with very little trouble, provided you have a young hare. The whole method rests on keeping a naturally dry, near-fatless animal from drying out.
- The hinge: fat, and plenty of itHare carries almost no intramuscular fat, so the bacon or fat pork is structural rather than decorative. Cover the back and legs completely, tie it on, and baste every 15 minutes; uncover only for the last 15 minutes if you want colour.
- Before a clear fireThe original assumes a spit in front of an open grate, where a brief blast of fierce radiant heat does what the recipe calls setting the flesh (it does not, despite the old belief, seal juices in). The book gives no oven temperatures; as a modern equivalent, start at 425F for 15 minutes, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- Age of the animal decides everythingOnly a young hare (a leveret, up to about a year) will roast well. An older animal roasted for two hours comes out dry and stringy no matter how much bacon is on it; those are for jugging or braising.
- TimingThe recipe's one and a quarter hours suits a smaller hare, two hours a large one; no weights are given. Judge by the thickest part of the hind leg reaching about 160F, at which point the meat is cooked through but not yet shredding. The saddle will be drier than the legs, which is unavoidable in a whole roast.
- The stuffing from "the last recipe"Victorian forcemeat for hare typically runs to breadcrumbs, shredded suet, chopped bacon or the hare's liver, parsley, lemon peel, and egg to bind; check the preceding recipe for what is actually specified here. Any well-seasoned bread-and-herb stuffing does the same job of holding moisture in the cavity.
- Gravy and jelly"Good brown gravy" means a proper stock-based gravy, not pan juices alone; the pan drippings from barded hare are largely pork fat. Redcurrant jelly is served alongside, not stirred in, and it is doing the work of cutting the strong flavour of the meat.
- SourcingHare is a game butcher or online order in most places, usually sold skinned and whole. In Britain there is now a close season in parts of the country, and wild hare is only intermittently available; farmed rabbit is not a substitute in flavour, though it roasts by the same method in about half the time.
- Cost and yield3s. 6d. to 6s. was a substantial outlay for a household dish in the late nineteenth century. Six to eight servings is optimistic by modern portions; four to six is realistic from one hare.
Cassell's gives several methods for hare because the animal had to be dealt with in every condition from young to elderly. Roasting was reserved for the young ones; the famous jugged hare, cooked slowly with its own blood, was the fate of the rest. The barding with fat pork or bacon is the standard answer to lean game and appears in English cookery books from the seventeenth century onward, and the pairing with redcurrant jelly was by the nineteenth century so fixed to hare and venison that recipes simply say "send jelly to table" without explanation. The phrase "put it down before a clear fire" points to the technique: a clear fire is one burned down to bright coals with no smoke, the condition required for spit-roasting, and the instruction survived in print for decades after most kitchens had moved to closed ranges.