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Bouquet Garni (Half a gill of Claret or Port)
Half a gill of Claret or Port Wine.
Half a pint of Brown Sauce.
Cut the hare in neat pieces, wipe but not wash it; cut the bacon in strips, and fry in a saucepan ; add the hare. Let it sauté about ten minutes.
Add the claret, bouquet garni, and mushrooms; let this simmer gently one hour, then add the brown sauce and the onions, which should be previously blanched; let it simmer again for about half an hour, remove the bouquet garni, and serve with fried croûtons.
One gill of Tomato Sauce, Half a gill of Glaze, One tablespoonful of Chutney, if added to this, makes a great improvement.
Côtelettes de Mouton à l'Ambassadrice.
Ingredients.
One best end of the neck of Mutton.
One ounce of Butter.
One Shalot (chopped fine).
One dessertspoonful of chopped Mushrooms.
One ounce of Flour.
One teaspoonful of chopped Parsley.
One gill of Stock.
This page has been mangled in printing: the heading and ingredient list belong to a hare stew in the civet manner, and the last few lines are the start of an unrelated mutton recipe. Read the instructions and work back to the shopping list — hare, streaky bacon, mushrooms, button onions, brown sauce, claret, bouquet garni, croûtons.
- Half a gillAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill is 2½ fl oz, a scant third of a US cup. Half a pint of brown sauce is 10 fl oz imperial, about 1¼ cups.
- Brown sauceNot the bottled condiment. In a book of this class it means espagnole or a well-reduced demi-glace: brown roux moistened with brown stock and simmered down. A good reduced veal or game stock thickened lightly will stand in.
- GlazeThe optional half gill of glaze is glace de viande — stock boiled down to a syrup that sets firm when cold. Half a gill of it, or a commercial meat glace, supplies the gloss and depth the sauce is being asked for.
- Wipe, do not washThis is the hinge. Hare is bought with its blood, and washing carries away both blood and flavour; the dark, gamey character of the finished dish depends on keeping them. Blot the joints dry so they brown rather than steam in the bacon fat.
- The hare itselfOrder from a game dealer; hare is not a supermarket item. A whole hare jointed gives 4 to 6 portions. A young animal will be tender inside the hour and a half specified, an old one will not — check a hind leg and give it longer if it resists the point of a knife.
- If you substitute rabbitFarmed rabbit is much leaner and milder. Cut the first simmer to about 35 minutes before the brown sauce goes in, or the meat shreds off the bone.
- Blanched onionsSmall pickling or button onions, dropped in boiling water for a couple of minutes and drained, so they finish soft in the last half hour without clouding the sauce. Left raw they would still be crunching at the end.
- The chutneyThe tomato sauce, glaze and spoonful of chutney are an Anglo-Indian flourish typical of the period — sweetness and acid to cut the richness. Add them with the brown sauce, and taste before salting, since chutney and reduced glaze both carry salt.
- The mutton fragmentThe lines beginning Côtelettes de Mouton à l'Ambassadrice are the opening of a separate recipe whose method is not on this page. Do not try to combine the two lists.
A hare cut up, browned with bacon, wetted with red wine and finished with a brown sauce is the French civet de lièvre in English dress, close cousin to the older English jugged hare, which was cooked in a covered jug set in a pan of water and thickened at the last with the animal's own blood. "High class" cookery books like this one were written for households keeping a trained cook, and they assume the French repertoire and its vocabulary — croûtons, sauté — without translation, because the professional kitchen of the period was organised on French lines even when the game came off an English estate. The optional tomato sauce and chutney look like a British addition, at a time when bottled chutneys imported through the Indian trade seem to have found their way into gravies and made dishes rather than being kept for the curry alone.