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Leveret, Braised
Truss the leveret like a hare, and fill it with a forcemeat made as follows. Grate very finely two ounces of stale crumb of bread, season with a salt-spoonful of salt, a salt-spoonful of pounded sugar, half a salt-spoonful of pepper, half a salt-spoonful of finely-minced lemon-rind, and half a salt-spoonful of grated nutmeg; add a shallot, chopped small, a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, and half a tea-spoonful of sweet herbs. When these ingredients are thoroughly mixed, work them together with a dessert-spoonful of brandy and two ounces of clarified butter. Fill the leveret with the forcemeat, and sew it up securely. Place two or three slices of bacon at the bottom of the braising-pan. Fasten two or three more on the back of the leveret, and put it legs downwards into the pan. Pour over it half a pint of good gravy, and add a small onion, finely minced, a sliced carrot, a glassful of sherry, and two table-spoonfuls of mushroom ketchup. Cover the pan closely, and simmer gently for two hours. Take out the leveret. Press the vegetables through a sieve, put them back into the gravy, thicken it with two tea-spoonfuls of flour, mixed smoothly with a little cold water, return both leveret and gravy to the stewpan, and simmer for about a quarter of an hour longer. Serve very hot. Probable cost of leveret, 4s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian game recipe that assumes you have a butcher who sells hares whole. Almost everything here translates directly; the sourcing is the hard part.
- What a leveret isA leveret is a hare in its first year, usually under about 5 lb dressed, and noticeably more tender than an adult hare. Hare is sold by game dealers in season and can be ordered frozen; a whole rabbit of 3-4 lb is the usual stand-in, though it is leaner and drier and will be done sooner.
- Salt-spoonfuls and dessert-spoonsA salt-spoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so the forcemeat carries roughly 1/4 tsp each salt and sugar and 1/8 tsp each pepper, lemon rind, nutmeg. A dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons. The "glassful" of sherry is genuinely vague -- a Victorian sherry glass held about 2 fl oz, but larger wine glasses were also meant, so treat 2 to 4 fl oz as the range.
- Half a pint of gravyAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. "Good gravy" here means well-flavoured brown stock, not thickened sauce -- the thickening comes at the end with the flour.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquid, not the tomato condiment. It is still made in Britain; two tablespoons of mushroom soy or a tablespoon of Worcestershire plus a tablespoon of stock gives a comparable savoury depth.
- Sweet herbsUsually thyme and marjoram, sometimes with savory or a little basil; the mixture varied from book to book. Half a teaspoon suggests dried and rubbed; about a teaspoon of the fresh leaves is the rough equivalent.
- The hinge: gentle heat, tight lidHare legs toughen and shred if the liquid boils. Keep it at a bare tremble on the hob, or set the covered pan in a 300F oven for the two hours, which holds the temperature more reliably. The bacon on the back and beneath the animal is there to baste lean meat that has almost no fat of its own.
- Timing and donenessTwo hours suits a young hare; an older one may want three, a rabbit closer to 75-90 minutes. Test the thickest part of the thigh -- a skewer should meet no resistance and the meat should be pulling from the bone.
- Sewing and servingTrussing thread or fine butcher's twine works for closing the cavity; remove it before carving. The final quarter-hour returns the leveret to the sieved, thickened gravy to warm through and take up the sauce. The recipe gives it as sufficient for five or six persons.
The word leveret comes through Anglo-Norman from Latin lepus, hare, by way of a diminutive -- literally a little hare -- and by the nineteenth century it had come to be used, loosely rather than as any fixed trade term, for a hare of the current year, said by traditional market lore to be identifiable by a small bony knob near the foot of the foreleg. That distinction mattered because age dictated method. Old hares were jugged or made into soup for hours; a leveret was young enough to roast or braise whole and stuff, which is what Cassell's does here. The recipe's quoted cost of 4s. places it as a substantial purchase for a middle-class kitchen, and it reflects a period when hare reached British tables through game dealers, poulterers and country connections rather than the butcher's counter -- hares were subject to game law and to a rough seasonal convention that avoided the breeding months. The forcemeat, with its bread, shallot, nutmeg, lemon rind and brandy bound with clarified butter, is the standard English stuffing of the era, close to what the same books recommend for veal and roast hare alike.