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Liver Sauce for Roast Hare or Rabbit
303. The liver should be well stewed in brown stock if for hare, or white if for rabbit; when quite done pound it with a few herbs, a clove of shalot, and afterwards add to the gravy in which it has stewed a little vinegar or lemon-juice, a glass of white wine if for rabbit, if for hare a glass of port-wine, with, if approved, half a glass of currant jelly. Simmer the whole, and flavour with salt and pepper. Another Liver Sauce for a Hare. --Bruise the liver of a hare raw with a spoon, melt a little butter, with some milk and flour, and put the liver into it hot; add a little salt and good cream, with some of the gravy from the hare. Simmer it altogether over the fire, stirring it all the time.
Two sauces built on the liver of the animal being roasted: a strained brown or white gravy sauce, and a plainer creamed version. Both hinge on gentle heat once the liver goes in.
- Getting the liverHares and wild rabbits are usually sold with the offal, but a butcher's rabbit rarely is. Order it in advance, or substitute two or three chicken livers, which have a comparable texture though a milder flavour.
- "A glass of wine"In Victorian recipe books a wine glass is roughly 2 fl oz, about a quarter cup. A modern 6 oz pour of port will swamp the sauce.
- ShalotShallot. One clove means one segment of a shallot bulb, not the whole thing, and it wants to be finely chopped before pounding.
- PoundingThe mortar work can be done in a small food processor or with a fork against a sieve. The recipe does not call for straining, but you can push the paste through a fine sieve afterwards if you want a smoother sauce.
- Cook the liver throughLiver should be stewed until firm and no longer pink inside, then pounded. The second sauce relies on the hot butter-and-milk base to cook the raw bruised liver, so it needs a full few minutes of simmering and constant stirring, not a brief warming.
- Don't boil the cream versionOnce the cream is in, hold the pan just below a simmer. Flour gives it some protection, but a hard boil will still make it grainy and dull the liver flavour.
- Currant jellyRedcurrant jelly, the standard British accompaniment to game. Half a wine glass is about 1 fl oz, roughly two tablespoons; add it off the boil and taste before adding more.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities, but either sauce will make roughly a cup, enough to accompany a roast hare or a couple of rabbits. The floured version in particular thickens as it stands, so loosen it with a little of the roasting gravy before serving.
Liver sauce is the frugal heart of British game cookery: the roast's own offal, too small to serve on its own, pounded back into the gravy it will be eaten with. The split between brown stock and port for hare and white stock and white wine for rabbit follows the older kitchen convention that dark meat takes dark liquor and pale meat pale, hare being much stronger and more strongly flavoured than rabbit. Redcurrant jelly with hare and venison is a long-standing English pairing, generally explained as a foil to the meat's ironiness rather than as sweetening for its own sake. The second, plainer sauce is thickened with flour, milk and cream rather than stock and wine.