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Stuffing for Hare
Ingredients.
Two ounces of Beef Suet.
Three ounces of Breadcrumbs. .
Parsley, Marjoram, Lemon Thyme, grated Lemon Peel, in equal quantities, two ounces.
Shalot. Pepper and Salt.
A Victorian forcemeat given as a bare ingredient list, in the assumption that any cook knew what to do with it: chop, mix, bind, and pack it into the body cavity of a hare before roasting. A few of the quantities need interpretation.
- The herb measurement"Two ounces" almost certainly means two ounces of mixed herbs in total, in equal parts, not two ounces of each. Two ounces of each of four flavourings would swamp three ounces of crumbs; read it as roughly 55 g of chopped parsley, marjoram, lemon thyme and grated lemon zest combined.
- Beef suetFresh butcher's suet, finely chopped or grated, was the standard fat for forcemeat. Packet shredded suet works; it is drier and slightly firmer, so the mixture may need an extra spoonful of moisture. Suet is what keeps the stuffing succulent through a long roast — butter is not a like-for-like swap.
- BreadcrumbsDry white crumbs from a day-old loaf, not the sandy commercial kind and not panko. The 3 oz here is 85 g; as a volume that is anything from about three-quarters of a cup if grated fine and dry to a cup and a half if soft and loosely packed.
- The shalotNo quantity is given. One medium shallot, very finely chopped, suits this scale. Softening it in a little butter first takes the raw edge off; raw is what the list implies, and sharper.
- The missing binderThe list omits one. Forcemeats of this type are usually bound with a beaten egg, and without a binder the mixture tends to crumble out of the cavity when the hare is carved. If you add one, add it last and mix only until it coheres.
- YieldThis makes enough for one hare, roughly 200 g of stuffing. A hare will take it comfortably; if you are cooking a rabbit instead, halve the quantity.
- Cooking throughStuffing packed inside game insulates itself and lags well behind the meat. Pack it loosely and check that the centre of the stuffing, not just the saddle, has reached 75C. Baking any surplus separately in a small dish is the easier route.
Forcemeat of suet, crumbs and herbs is the workhorse stuffing of the English kitchen, and its appearance alongside hare is a reminder that hare was once ordinary market food rather than a specialist order. The pairing of hare with lemon thyme, marjoram and lemon peel is very much of the period: the meat is dark, strongly flavoured and often hung for several days, and the sharp citrus-and-herb note was there to lift it. Suet did double duty as fat and as structure, basting the lean saddle from the inside while the crumb mixture held its shape for carving. Recipes of this class were routinely printed as an ingredient list alone \High Class Cookery Recipes was presumed to know that herbs are chopped fine, suet shredded, and the whole bound with egg before it goes into the beast.