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Stuffing for Hare, Meg Dod's
Grate the crumb of a stale penny loaf, and soak it in port or claret. Mix with it four ounces of beef suet chopped small, a tea-spoonful of finely-shredded parsley, a small pinch of minced shallot, a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-rind, a tea-spoonful of grated nutmeg, and a little salt and cayenne. Mix the ingredients thoroughly, and bind them together with yolk of egg. Put the forcemeat into the hare, and sew it up closely. If the liver is in a sound state, it may be parboiled, chopped, and mixed with the forcemeat. In the original recipe it was recommended that a boned anchovy should be added to this preparation. This may be introduced or omitted, according to taste.
A wine-soaked suet forcemeat for a roast hare, of the kind that was expected to season the meat from the inside as much as to fill it. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the quantities need judgement before you start.
- The penny loafA penny loaf was a fixed-price rather than fixed-weight item and varied with the price of flour, so the amount is genuinely ambiguous. For a hare, work to about 4-5 oz of stale white crumb, roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups loosely packed, which gives enough stuffing to fill the body cavity without packing it tight.
- Soaking, not drowningMoisten the crumbs with port or claret until they hold together when squeezed, then squeeze the excess out. Sodden stuffing steams rather than sets, and the egg yolk cannot bind a wet mass.
- The nutmegA full teaspoon of grated nutmeg is far more than modern palates accept and will dominate the hare. A quarter teaspoon is closer to current practice; the same applies to the lemon rind if your lemons are large.
- Beef suetFresh butcher's suet, chopped fine, is what is meant. Packaged shredded suet works and needs no preparation; four ounces is somewhere between two-thirds of a cup and a full cup shredded, depending how coarsely it is cut. Cold unsalted butter, coarsely grated, is a usable substitute, though it renders faster and the stuffing will be softer.
- The liver"If the liver is in a sound state" is the important clause. Hare liver from a properly handled carcass is fine; anything discoloured, spotted or with adhesions should be discarded rather than parboiled. Parboil for two or three minutes only, then chop, or it turns grainy.
- The anchovyOne boned salt anchovy or two oil-packed fillets, mashed to a paste. It reads oddly but adds savour rather than fish flavour, and it is doing the job a spoonful of anchovy essence or Worcestershire sauce would do now. Reduce the added salt if you use it.
- Cooking throughStuffing packed into a cavity heats slowly. The recipe itself gives no roasting instructions; whatever method you use, aim for the centre of the forcemeat to reach 165F before the hare comes out, and check with a probe rather than by the clock.
- YieldEnough for one hare, which serves four to six. Any surplus can be rolled into small balls and roasted alongside for the last twenty minutes.
"Meg Dods" was the pen name adopted by Christian Isobel Johnstone for The Cook and Housewife's Manual (Edinburgh, 1826), the name borrowed from the sharp-tongued innkeeper in Walter Scott's St Ronan's Well; the book was well enough known that later compilers cited her by name as an authority. The forcemeat is of a type long used in British game cookery, hare being very lean and strongly flavoured and wanting both added fat and a wine-and-spice counterweight; the suet, port, nutmeg and lemon peel are the same set of seasonings found in game pies and jugged hare of the period. The optional anchovy reflects an older eighteenth-century habit of using it as a general savoury note in meat cookery, before bottled sauces made the practice invisible.