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Meg Merilees Soup
A soup, or stew, for the sportsman or country gentleman when game is abundant. In seasons of scarcity, meat helps to form the basis or stock; but for the gourmet, boil down a rather old hare, with the blood, the trimmings, and inferior parts of venison, and any game-bones; but all should be fresh. Boil in three quarts of water, with a bunch of savoury herbs, parsley, two large turnips, two carrots, two middle-sized onions, each stuck with a clove, a dessert-spoonful of whole pepper, and one of allspice. When boiled to a pulp, strain, and add to the stock as great a variety of game as can be procured--a young hare, or part of one (neatly jointed), blackcock, partridge, pheasant, grouse, etc.--all cut, and well spiced, to be fried slightly, or not, according to taste, before being put into the strained stock. The blood of the hare must not be omitted. Mix a little broth, and boil with a good thickening of rice-flour, to be afterwards stirred into the rest of the stock. More seasoning will be required of allspice, pepper, and salt. When boiling, throw in a dozen button-onions, two sticks of celery (cut into quarter-inch lengths), and a small white cabbage (quartered). Simmer gently, until the game is done, but not over-done. Any additional flavouring may be given to the stew, and forcemeat-balls, made of the liver of the hare, may be introduced; but this is not frequently done. Time, three hours to boil stock.
A two-stage sporting dish: a long, hard-boiled game stock, then a stew of assorted birds finished in it. Almost everything that can go wrong here happens in the second stage, where delicate game meets a pot that wants to keep boiling.
- The hinge: cook the birds separately in timeGrouse, partridge and pheasant breast are done in 15-25 minutes of gentle simmering; a jointed young hare wants an hour or more. Add in order of toughness rather than all at once, or the birds will be dry strings by the time the hare gives way. "Done, but not over-done" is the whole instruction.
- Blood as thickenerHare blood thickens and sets like egg as it heats, and coagulation begins well below simmering point, so it should be tempered with a ladle of hot broth and stirred in off the boil at the very end. If the pot boils hard after the blood goes in, the soup is likely to curdle into brown grit. Blood is hard to come by outside a butcher or game dealer who handles whole hares; without it the dish is still good, simply paler and less rich.
- BlackcockBlack grouse are scarce across most of their former range and are protected or effectively unshootable in much of Britain and Europe. Use red grouse, wood pigeon or guinea fowl instead; the flavour intent is dark, gamey bird rather than that particular species.
- Quantities and yieldThree quarts is about 3.4 litres of water; expect it to reduce over the three hours. With an old hare, a couple of birds and the vegetables, the pot should serve eight to ten as a main course.
- Whole spiceA dessertspoonful is about two teaspoons. Peppercorns and allspice berries go into the stock whole and are removed at the straining; the further seasoning called for at the end should be ground, added a little at a time, as allspice takes over a dish quickly.
- Rice-flour thickeningRice flour is still sold, often as a gluten-free baking flour, and gives a clean, slightly translucent body rather than the opacity of a wheat roux. Slake it in cold broth before it meets the hot pot. Around 40-50 g to 2 litres gives a stew-like consistency; less if you want it to stay a soup.
- Strain properlyThe first boil is meant to be reduced to a pulp and then strained through a fine sieve or muslin. Game bones throw a good deal of scum and splintered marrow, so skim during the three hours and let the strained stock settle so you can pour off the sediment.
- The late vegetablesButton onions, celery and quartered cabbage all go in near the end. Cabbage quarters need only about fifteen minutes; longer and they turn sulphurous and drag the whole pot with them.
- Forcemeat ballsIf you make them, the hare's liver should be minced with breadcrumbs, suet and herbs, rolled small, and poached in the stew for the last ten minutes rather than boiled hard. Liver from a wild hare is worth inspecting before use and discarding if spotted or discoloured.
Meg Merrilies is the gypsy seer of Walter Scott's Guy Mannering (1815), later fixed in the popular imagination by Keats's poem about the old woman who "liv'd upon the Moors". Victorian cookery attached her name to precisely the sort of dish the character suggests: a big, dark, out-of-doors stew of whatever the moor yields, thickened with the animal's own blood and heavy with pepper and allspice. The recipe presents itself as a dish for the sportsman or country gentleman, and presumes a household with more game than it can eat fresh and an old hare not worth roasting. Names borrowed from Scott were common on nineteenth-century menus and in nineteenth-century cookbooks, and the naming is generally decorative rather than evidence of any Scottish or Romani origin for the recipe itself. What is genuine is the technique: boiling carcasses and trimmings to a pulp for stock, then poaching the good meat in it briefly, is the standard economy of a shooting kitchen.