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Hare Soup
Take a fine hare, skin and empty it, cut it into joints, take out the eyes, split the head in two, and put it, with two pounds of the shin of beef, cut into small pieces, into a saucepan, with a gallon of cold water. Remove the scum as it rises, and, when the water boils, put with it two onions, with three cloves in each, two or three sliced carrots, half a dozen peppercorns, and a salt-spoonful of bruised celery-seed, tied in muslin. Let the soup simmer very gently for two hours, then take out the best joints, remove the meat from the bones, return the latter to the stewpan, and simmer again for another hour, during the latter part of which a dessert-spoonful of salt and a bunch of sweet herbs, tied in muslin, may be added. If these are put into the soup too soon, their flavour will evaporate. Fry two chopped onions in a little butter, mix very smoothly with them two tablespoonfuls of ground rice or flour, moisten with a little of the liquid, then add it to the rest. After it has boiled, strain it through a colander, pick off the meat from the pieces of hare which were left in the soup, pound it in a mortar, pass it through a coarse sieve, and return it to the liquid; put in the pieces of hare which were set aside, and when they are thoroughly heated, add the blood of the hare, if this is liked. Add a quarter of a pint of port, and serve with forcemeat balls in the tureen. Sufficient for six or eight persons. Probable cost, 2s. per quart, supposing the hare to cost 3s. 6d.
A three-hour game soup that doubles as a lesson in extraction: the best joints come out early so they stay tender, while everything else is boiled down for flavour. The one thing that will spoil it is heat applied to the blood at the end.
- The blood is a liaison, not an ingredient to boilOnce the blood goes in, the soup must be kept below a simmer — around 75-80C — and served promptly. Bring it back to the boil and the protein seizes into brown grit that no straining will fix. If you are at all unsure of the blood's freshness, leave it out; the soup is complete without it, only thinner and paler.
- QuantitiesA gallon here is the imperial gallon, 8 pints or about 4.5 litres. A quarter of a pint of port is 5 fl oz, roughly 150 ml. A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons and a salt-spoonful about a quarter-teaspoon, so the salt works out near 10 g for the whole pot — taste and adjust once the liquid has reduced.
- Sourcing the hareA dressed brown hare of 5-6 lb is a game-dealer or online order in Britain and Ireland, and difficult to obtain in most of North America. Farmed rabbit will make the soup but not the flavour: it is much milder and lacks the dark, almost beefy depth. If substituting, use two rabbits and increase the shin of beef.
- Why the eyes come outRemoving the eyes is the standard instruction in game cookery, usually explained on the grounds that they turn bitter over a long boil, though that is received wisdom rather than anything demonstrated. The split head is worth including for the gelatine it gives up.
- Shin of beef earns its placeIt is there for collagen as much as flavour. Few cuts give the same body over three hours; oxtail is the nearest equivalent, chuck has far less connective tissue.
- The pounded meatWorking the boiled hare through a mortar and coarse sieve is the Victorian route to a thickened, slightly grainy soup. A short pulse in a food processor with a ladle of the strained liquid does the same job in a minute; pass it through a sieve afterwards to catch sinew.
- Reserved jointsPull the saddle and hind-leg meat at the two-hour mark and keep it covered. Returning it only to heat through, as directed, is the difference between shredded meat with texture and dry threads.
- Forcemeat ballsNone are specified. A common Victorian forcemeat was breadcrumbs, suet, chopped hare liver, lemon zest, thyme and egg, rolled small and either fried or poached in stock; cooking them separately keeps stray crumbs out of the soup.
- Yield and costSix to eight persons, as the recipe states. The "2s. per quart" is pre-decimal shillings, and the recipe's own figures put the hare at 3s. 6d. — the largest single item, with the shin of beef and the port on top of it.
Hare soup belongs to the same British game tradition as jugged hare, and shares its defining trick: the animal's blood stirred in at the end to thicken and darken the liquid, with port to soften the iron edge. The method demonstrates the full business of stock-making in one dish — cold-water start, careful skimming, aromatics added at the boil, herbs held back until the last hour so their volatile oils do not simply steam away. That last point, made explicitly in the text, is sound and still taught. Hare reached urban kitchens through poulterers and game dealers, and the recipe gives its cost in shillings per quart.