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Hare, Roast, Cold
Good hare soup may be made of the remains of cold roast hare. Chop it small, and put it with the stuffing and three quarts of water into a saucepan. Let it simmer gently for two hours. If no stuffing remains, the usual herbs and seasoning must be added. Rub it through a sieve, boil up, and serve. A glassful of red wine may be added, if liked. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A thrift recipe: the carcass and scraps of a roast hare become soup for four or five. The instructions assume a Victorian cook who already knows what went into the stuffing and how to work a sieve.
- Hare and substitutesWild hare is sold by game dealers, often frozen, and its meat is dark, lean and strongly flavoured. Rabbit stands in but gives a much paler, milder soup; if using rabbit, hold back on the wine and expect to season harder.
- Bones do the workStrip and chop the meat, but put the bones in the pot too — the joints and ribs carry most of the gelatine and flavour. Pull them out before sieving.
- Three quarts is a lot of waterThat is roughly 3.4 litres (imperial) for four or five servings, so the two-hour simmer is meant to reduce it appreciably. Leave the lid ajar; if the finished soup is still thin, boil it down before the final seasoning.
- The stuffing is the seasoningA period hare stuffing was forcemeat: breadcrumbs, suet, chopped liver, thyme, marjoram, lemon peel, sometimes mace or a little onion. If none is left, that is the flavour profile to rebuild — herbs, lemon zest, a blade of mace, an onion — not a modern stock-cube approach.
- "Rub it through a sieve"This is a purée, not a clear soup. A food mill with the medium plate does the job in a fraction of the time; a blender followed by a pass through a fine sieve works too, but blitz the meat only, not the bones.
- A glassful of red wineA Victorian wineglassful is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz (roughly 57 ml). Add it after sieving and boil up for a minute or two so the raw alcohol cooks off. Port is also frequently used with hare in period cookery, and a spoonful of redcurrant jelly stirred in at the same point would not be out of place.
- FinishingPurée soups of this kind separate slightly on standing; whisk as you reheat. Season with salt and pepper only at the very end, once the reduction has concentrated whatever salt came off the roast.
Cassell's places this among the economy notes that follow many of the roasts in the book, a dish judged as much on what it did with the remains as on the joint itself. Hare soup, thick and dark and often finished with port and redcurrant jelly, was a familiar item on nineteenth-century British tables, and the version built from a cold roast is the household form of the grander recipe that began with a whole hare and its blood. The reliance on leftover forcemeat is telling: the stuffing carried the herbs, lemon and liver that the soup needs, so a cook who had it needed to add almost nothing. Hare reached middle-class kitchens through the game trade and through gifts from country connections, and its availability was shaped by the game laws of the period.