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Leveret, Civet Of
Divide the leveret into neat joints. Cut a quarter of a pound of bacon into inch-square pieces, and fry them; take them up and fry the leveret in the bacon fat. Then take out the leveret, put back the bacon, and add an onion, a shallot, a small carrot, a small turnip, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, and a bay-leaf. Turn all over in the pan a few times, add the leveret, half a pint of sliced lemon, and as much stock as will cover the meat. Let it come to the boil, then simmer gently for an hour and a half till tender. Add a table-spoonful of flour mixed to a smooth paste with water, and season with pepper and salt. Put the meat on a dish, boil the sauce, skim it, pour a glass of port into it, strain over the leveret, and serve.
A straightforward brown stew of young hare, workable in one heavy pan. The chief obstacles are the game itself and one garbled line in the ingredient list.
- What a leveret isA hare in its first year, leaner and darker-fleshed than rabbit. The recipe gives no weight. Farmed rabbit of similar size substitutes but cooks faster; check at the one-hour mark. A mature hare will want longer, closer to two and a half hours.
- The "half a pint of sliced lemon"The line cannot be read literally, and something has plainly gone wrong in the setting. What was intended is not recoverable: a measure of wine with sliced lemon, or simply half a lemon sliced, are both possible readings. Whichever you follow, taste before adding more acid.
- Cut it up dry-jointedDivide into forelegs, hind legs split at the joint, and the saddle cut into two or three pieces. Keep the pieces close in size or the loin will be dry before the hind legs give way.
- Brown properly, in batchesA quarter pound of bacon renders enough fat, but crowding the pan steams the meat and you lose the fond that gives a civet its colour. Work in two or three lots and let each piece take real colour.
- The vegetables are flavouring, not fillingOnion, shallot, carrot and turnip go in whole or in large pieces to be discarded at the straining. Nothing here is meant to be served, which is why the sauce is strained over the meat at the end.
- ThickeningA tablespoon of flour slaked in water is a thin liaison by modern standards. Let the strained sauce reduce openly for a few minutes rather than adding more flour, and skim carefully; bacon fat and hare both throw a good deal.
- The port goes in off the boilAdd it after skimming and give it only a minute or two. Long boiling turns port harsh and flat, which is the opposite of what it is here for.
- YieldA leveret of this size serves four, five if there is a substantial starch alongside. Boiled potatoes, noodles or fried bread croutons are all traditional; redcurrant jelly at the table is usual with hare.
Civet takes its name from cive (Old French for onion, the same root as chive) ot from the game but the mass of onions cooked with it — by the conventional derivation at least. By the nineteenth century the word had narrowed to mean a dark stew of furred game, usually hare, finished with wine and traditionally thickened with the animal's own blood; some English cookbooks of the period dropped the blood and substituted a flour liaison, as Cassell's does here, while blood-thickened jugged hare remained common. Cassell's, being alphabetically arranged, gives leveret its own heading, and a young hare was recognised as needing far less cooking than the old animals that went into jugged hare and soup.