Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Hare Soup
pcel must be chopped very fine, and half a pint of madeira or sherry wine added just before it is sent to table; squeeze in half a lemon, and put in egg and forcemeat-balls, if approved of, the balls being well-seasoned. About three-quarters of a pound of scrag of mutton will make the gravy.
Another and Plainer Receipt. -Scald the hair off a calf's head, but leave the skin on. Make three pints of stock with three pounds of mutton or veal, flavour with whole pepper, mace, onion and sweet herbs. Cut the outside of the head (the clear part till you come to the flesh) in pieces two or three inches square, stew it in the soup two or three hours till tender, add cayenne, the rind of half a lemon, and madeira wine; serve with the meat and egg balls. The remainder of the head will boil. 241. MOCK-TURTLE SOUP (Clear). - Either of the above receipts may be made clear by thickening them with arrowroot instead of flour, and clarifying them (see par. 224). When this mode is preferred, the soup is served without forcemeat or egg-balls. 242. Cut a large old hare in small pieces, and put it in a jug with a little lean ham, some celery, two onions sliced, a bunch of sweet herbs, quarter of a pint of red wine, and three quarts of water. Stew it, closely covered, for two or three hours, till the meat is done to rags. Strain off the soup and take the meat from the bones, pound the meat in a mortar, add it to the soup till it is of a proper thickness, give it a boil up, and add two teaspoonsful of soy and one of ketchup, with cayenne pepper and salt, and a little moist sugar. The brains may be made with the stewed and pounded liver into forcemeat balls, or the liver may be pounded with the meat for thickening the soup. Some prefer to add the port-wine before serving, in which case a good glass would be sufficient; a small quantity of excellent soup may be made from the remains of a roast hare; in this case a little thickening of flour and butter also may be required. A clear soup may be made by stewing the hare in some veal or other light stock, and extracting the goodness of the meat by stewing for two or three hours without adding pounded meat to the soup. More wine in this case must be added, and a little of the meat may be served in squares in the soup. Another. Take a hare, and after skinning it don't soak it in water in the usual way, but cut it up into pieces, put it into a stewpan, also three or four heads of moderate sized celery, and the same of onions, and a very small bunch of sweet herbs, pepper and salt to taste, and about four or eight cloves; add a gallon of water, and let it stew one and half hour; then take out the back or any other part, and cut off meat enough to serve with it when done, put back the bones into the stewpan, and let it stew four or five hours longer. Next strain it through a sieve, and pound in a mortar the whole of the meat off the bones, add celery and onions, cut as fine as you can, and then rub through a sieve (of course not the pieces which you have previously cut off to serve with the soup), put it back to the soup and let it stew another hour, and serve with the pieces of meat in it, and if you like a few forcemeat balls; should it not be thick enough add a little thickening. Another. Cut a hare in pieces, stew it in any broth or boilings of meat that happen to be in the house till it is tender, then cut off, pound, and rub through a sieve the best part of the meat, with a little of the stock. When that is done return all the bones, &c., to the stock-pot (if the hare is small and the stock not good, add some gravy, beef, and a little lean ham) - one onion, some sweet herbs, a little flour and butter mixed, mushroom ketchup and cayenne, and simmer for three or four hours; then strain it, and add the pounded hare, a little currant jelly, and port-wine: half a teacupful of cream is an improvement before it is served. TO MAKE HARE SOUP WITH HARE THAT HAS BEEN COOKED. 243. First cut off some nice pieces of meat to serve in the soup, then chop up the remainder and put into a stewpan, with any bones or odd pieces of meat you may have, or else some good stock; put as much stock or water as will make the soup required. Add celery, onions, cloves, pepper, and salt, but not sweet herbs, as the stuffing will suffice; let it stew four or five hours, and then strain it off; pound and rub it through a sieve, then add it to the soup again, and let it stew another hour, when serve with the meat and forcemeat balls. Add a little thickening if required.
Four variations on the same dish: a long-stewed hare broth thickened with the pounded meat of the animal itself. The technique is sound, but the vocabulary and the quantities need translating.
- The hinge: don't wash the hareOne version says pointedly not to soak the meat "in the usual way." Hare is dark and bloody, and soaking leaches out exactly the flavour the soup depends on. Wipe the pieces dry instead, and if your butcher can supply the blood, hold it back and stir it in off the heat at the very end for body and colour.
- No boiling once the puree is inNo hard boil once the puree is in -- the receipt itself says to "give it a boil up" after the pounded meat goes back, but a bare simmer is gentler: a hard boil makes the fibres grainy and the soup separates. The same applies to the half teacupful of cream in the fourth version, and to the port.
- An "old hare"A mature hare, tough and strongly flavoured, is what these receipts assume; young leveret is wasted here. A whole hare from a game dealer, jointed, is the equivalent. Farmed rabbit will not do the same job, being far milder and paler.
- Pounding, without a mortarWhere the text says pound in a mortar and rub through a sieve, use a food processor with a ladle of stock, then push the puree through a fine sieve. The sieving is not optional: it removes the sinew and fine bone shards that make a hare puree gritty.
- Stewing in a jugThe first method puts the hare in a closely covered jug, which in period practice generally meant standing the jug in a pan of simmering water, as for jugged hare, though this receipt does not say so. A tall stoneware jug or a deep casserole with a tight lid in a low oven does the same thing, and the receipt's two or three hours is right for the meat to fall "to rags."
- Soy, ketchup and moist sugar"Soy" is imported soy sauce, used in the period as a colouring and savoury flavouring; two teaspoons is still about right. "Ketchup" means mushroom ketchup, not tomato. "Moist sugar" is soft light brown sugar, and a teaspoon is plenty.
- Wine measuresA wineglass in period receipts is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a "good glass" of port is perhaps 3 fl oz; the quarter of a pint of red wine in the first version is 5 fl oz in British measure. The clear version, as the text says, needs more wine added.
- Omit the brainsThe brains in the hare receipt are the animal's own, to be pounded with the liver into forcemeat balls. Make the balls with the pounded liver, breadcrumbs, suet and herbs and leave the brains out. Bovine head and brain tissue, called for in the calf's-head receipts on this page, is now restricted material and has no place in a modern kitchen.
- Yield and clovesOne hare with a gallon of water gives 8-10 servings as a first course. The "four or eight cloves" is a wide latitude: four is ample for a gallon, eight will dominate.