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Bread-crumbs (Cut the meat out of the back)
Cut the meat out of the back of a hare on each side of the bone, cut this into neat fillets about an eighth of an inch thick, smooth them out with a wet knife, and trim them neatly. Put the butter, herbs, parsley, mushrooms, red currant jelly, chutney, salt, cayenne and lemon-juice into a saucepan, and cook a little; lay the fillets in this mixture to get nicely seasoned, cover each fillet with a small piece of pig's caul, egg and bread-crumb, and fry in boiling fat for seven or eight minutes; dish up on a border of hare farce, fill in the centre with strips of tomatoes and mushrooms. Make a sauce as follows :- Ingredients.
Two ounces of trimmings of the Hare.
One ounce of Glaze.
Two ounces of Butter.
One ounce of Flour.
One pint of Stock.
One gill of Claret or Port.
A fried hare-fillet entrée in the late-Victorian manner, with a game sauce built on glaze and claret. The page as printed gives quantities only for the sauce, so the seasoning mixture has to be judged by eye.
- Missing quantitiesThe ingredient list preserved here belongs to the sauce only; the butter, herbs, parsley, mushrooms, red currant jelly, chutney, salt, cayenne and lemon juice for the seasoning mixture come without amounts, so they have to be judged by taste.
- The cutThe fillets come from the loin either side of the backbone — what a butcher now calls the saddle. One hare yields two strips of perhaps 6 oz each; at an eighth of an inch thick you are slicing on a slant to get any width at all, and a very sharp knife matters more than the wet blade the recipe recommends.
- Frying timeSeven or eight minutes will overcook hare cut an eighth of an inch thick. Crumbed fillets this thin need only a few minutes in hot fat, just long enough to colour the crumbs; hare loin is very lean and dries out quickly.
- Pig's caulCaul fat is the lacy membrane from around a pig's stomach. It is still sold by proper butchers, usually salted or frozen — soak it in warm water to unfold it. Thin sheets of pork back fat or streaky bacon will stand in, though they add more flavour than caul does.
- GlazeThe ounce of glaze is meat stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A commercial demi-glace or a heavily reduced brown stock does the same work; there is no substitute for the reduction if you want the sauce to have body without excess flour.
- A gillA quarter of a pint; five imperial fluid ounces, about 150 ml.
- Hare farceA forcemeat of minced hare bound with egg and crumbs, piped or moulded as a raised border on the serving dish and cooked until set. A coarse hare pâté mixture, cooked, serves the same purpose.
- YieldThe trimmings called for in the sauce are what you pare away making the fillets, so do the butchery first.
Hare occupied a particular rung in British cookery: too strong for an everyday roast, too prized to waste, and so it was broken down — saddle for fillets, legs and shoulders for jugging or civet, trimmings and liver for farce and sauce. This recipe is a professional kitchen's answer to that economy, using every part of the animal across one dish, which is why the sauce is thickened with the hare's own trimmings and the garnish sits on a border of its minced meat. The red currant jelly is the standard English accompaniment to game, here folded into the seasoning rather than served alongside; the chutney is the mark of the period, when Anglo-Indian condiments had settled so firmly into the British larder that a cookery text could reach for a spoonful without comment. Caul fat wrapping, meanwhile, is old and general practice — it bastes lean meat from the outside as it melts.