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Stuffing, Alexandre Dumas'
Stuffing prepared in the following way was originally intended for turkey (to "avoid spending forty or fifty francs on truffles"), but it is equally suited to hare. Mince together veal, chicken, and partridge flesh, if these are to be had, in small and equal portions, and add four ounces of sausage-meat. Boil from fifteen to twenty fine Lyons chestnuts till tender in salt and water. A stick of celery may be simmered with them. When the chestnuts are done enough, crush them, and mix them with the mincemeat. Put a clove of garlic and a handful of fresh green parsley-leaves inside the hare, fill it with the stuffing, and sew up securely.
A forcemeat given in proportions rather than weights, on the assumption that the cook knows how much a bird or a hare will hold. A few notes on the birds, the chestnuts and the doneness.
- Quantities are openOnly the sausage-meat (4 oz) and the chestnuts are specified. For a hare, reckon on about 1 lb of mixed minced meats to the 4 oz of sausage-meat and the chestnuts; a large turkey will take considerably more, a small bird proportionally less.
- Lyons chestnutsMarrons de Lyon, the large single-kernel sweet chestnuts sold for candying. Fifteen to twenty of them is roughly 1 lb in the shell. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts work; simmer them briefly with the celery for flavour, then crush.
- PartridgeNot a supermarket item outside the game season. Any dark-fleshed game bird, or the thigh meat of a guinea fowl, gives the same effect; if none is to be had, increase the chicken and accept a milder stuffing.
- Sausage-meatPlain seasoned pork sausage-meat, not a herbed or maple-sweetened breakfast blend. It supplies the fat that holds the lean veal and poultry together; skinning ordinary pork sausages is the simplest substitute.
- Mince, not pastePeriod mincing gives a coarse texture. A food processor will turn the veal and poultry to paste in seconds — pulse briefly, or chop by hand, or ask the butcher to mince the meats through a coarse plate.
- Garlic and parsley go in looseThe clove and the parsley leaves are laid in the cavity as aromatics beneath the stuffing, not worked into it. They perfume the hare from within and are discarded at carving.
- DonenessA stuffing of raw veal, poultry and pork inside a dense hare heats slowly. Check the centre of the stuffing with a probe and take it to 165F/74C; the hare itself will be well past that by then, which is what braised or roasted hare wants anyway.
- Cooking it apartIf the hare is being jugged or braised in pieces rather than roasted whole, bake the stuffing in a buttered dish, covered, at 350F for about 45 minutes. It carries the same weight as a separate forcemeat.
Alexandre Dumas père spent his last years on the Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, published posthumously in 1873, and Cassell's editors helped themselves to the more quotable of his entries. The parenthetical joke about not spending forty or fifty francs on truffles is the point of the recipe: a truffled turkey was the standard Christmas luxury of the Paris table, and chestnuts with a mixed game forcemeat were the frugal alternative that did not read as frugal. Chestnuts and turkey remain a French pairing to this day, and the extension of a turkey stuffing to hare is a natural one in a period when hare was a common enough autumn butcher's item rather than a specialist order.