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Leveret, to Dress a
INGREDIENTS butter, flour. AVERAGE CosT, 4s. each.
Leverets should be trussed in the same manner as a hare, but they do not require stuffing. Roast them before a clear fire and keep them well basted all the time they are cooking. A few minutes before serving, dredge them lightly with flour and froth them nicely. Serve with plain gravy in a dish and send to table red-currant jelly with them.
TIME. to hour.
SEASONABLE from May to August, but cheapest in July and August.
A leveret, butter, flour Liaison of Eggs (for Thickening Sauces). INGREDIENTS. The yolks of 3 eggs , 8 tablespoonfuls of milk or cream.
AVERAGE COST, 4d.
Beat up the yolks of the eggs, to which add the milk and strain the whole through a hairsieve. When the liaison is being added to the sauce it is intended to thicken, care must be exercised to keep stirring it during the whole time, or, otherwise, the eggs will curdle. It should only just simmer, but not boil.
A spit-roast for a young hare, written for an open fire and a cook who knew how to truss game. The method translates to an oven without much loss, provided the lean meat is kept covered in fat throughout.
- What a leveret isA hare in its first year, usually 2 to 3 lb dressed, as against 6 to 8 lb for a full-grown hare. The flesh is paler and far more tender, which is why no stuffing and no long braise are called for. A game dealer will supply one skinned and paunched on request; it is not a supermarket item.
- IngredientsThe list amounts to butter and flour only, plus the jelly and gravy named at the end. Allow about 4 oz butter for basting a single leveret, and a couple of tablespoons of flour for the final dredging.
- "Before a clear fire" in an ovenA clear fire is one burnt down past the smoke to steady radiant heat. In a modern oven, roast at 400F on a rack over a tray, turning the bird-like carcass once or twice so both sides colour.
- Basting is the hingeHare has almost no fat of its own and dries into string if neglected. Baste with melted butter every ten minutes, or lay barding fat or streaky bacon over the back and legs and remove it for the last few minutes to brown.
- Roasting timeThe original's stated time has not survived legibly here. Judge by size instead: a small leveret takes roughly 35 to 45 minutes, and game roasted to about 145F at the thickest part of the thigh, rested ten minutes, will be pink and juicy rather than grey.
- To "froth"Dredge the hot surface lightly with flour, spoon over more melted butter, and return it to the fiercest heat for two or three minutes. The flour and fat blister into a thin crisp coat. The oven grill does this job well; watch it, as it takes seconds to scorch.
- "Plain gravy"Not a flour sauce. Deglaze the roasting tray with a little game or beef stock, season, and skim. Thickening it would fight the frothed crust.
- Average costFour shillings each, in pre-decimal money, made a leveret a middling luxury. Today the price depends entirely on the season and your dealer.
- ServingOne leveret serves two, or three at a stretch. Send the red-currant jelly to the table separately, with the gravy in its own dish as directed.
Hare was one of the great fixtures of the English game season, and the distinction between hare and leveret mattered to a Victorian cook in a practical way: the old animal needed jugging, marinating or the long-cooked stuffing-and-forcemeat treatment, while the young one could simply be roasted and eaten. The May-to-August season given here reflects when leverets of the spring litters reached a usable size, before the autumn hare shooting proper began; hares breed through much of the year, which is why they escape the tidy game-season calendar that governs pheasant and grouse. Red-currant jelly beside roast game is an old British pairing, generally traced to the same reasoning that puts apple with pork and mint with lamb: a sharp fruit sweetness against dark, dry, iron-tasting meat. Frothing, now almost forgotten, was the standard Victorian finish for spit-roasted birds and game, and it survived in print long after the spit itself gave way to the closed range.