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To Boil Rabbits (Stewpan basting them well)
or stewpan, basting them well with butter, and adding a little lean ham, cut in thin slices; stew in a full pint of gravy, and while stewing season with mace, salt, cayenne, and lemon-peel; and before serving, thicken the gravy with flour and butter, or arrowroot, and add two table-spoonfuls of ketchup, or one with some Reading or Worcestershire sauce, and the juice of half a lemon. If wished rich add half a teacup of port-wine, and serve garnished with forcemeat balls browned and simmered in the stew. Currant jelly should be handed round with the above.
Or, Skin the hare, and cut it in small pieces, but do not wash it; stew it in butter till the blood is set, then put to it some gravy, with a bunch of sweet-herbs, two onions, a few cloves, a little mace, and black pepper; when it is stewed enough, strain off the butter, and put to it two or three spoonfuls of port-wine, and a little lemon juice; then thicken it with butter and flour, and season with salt to the taste. Oysters, mushrooms, and eggs boiled hard, with a little anchovy , are an agreeable addition.
Two related methods for a rich brown hare stew, the second a plainer variant. Both belong to the older British tradition of long, gentle stewing with port, spice and bottled sauce.
- The hinge: low and slowHare is dense, lean and full of connective tissue; it needs two to three hours at a bare simmer (a wild hare more, a farmed rabbit rather less) before it will yield. Boiling hard will make it stringy no matter how much butter and port go in.
- A full pint of gravyThat is 20 fl oz in British measure, so about 2 1/2 US cups of good brown stock. "Gravy" here means unthickened meat broth, not a finished sauce; thickening comes only at the end.
- KetchupIn this period ketchup means mushroom or walnut ketchup, thin, dark and salty. Tomato ketchup will make the dish sweet and sharp. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a spoonful of soy plus a little mushroom soaking liquid stands in acceptably.
- Reading sauceA spiced anchovy-based bottled sauce from Reading, long discontinued. Worcestershire, which the recipe already offers as the alternative, is the closest surviving relative.
- "Till the blood is set"In the second method the pieces are floured-less and unwashed so the blood clings to them, and the initial butter-frying is only meant to firm the surfaces. Nothing is being cooked through at this stage.
- Mace and lemon-peelMace is the outer covering of nutmeg, warmer and less resinous; a blade or two, or 1/4 teaspoon ground. Lemon-peel means a wide pared strip of zest with no pith, lifted out before serving.
- AnchovySold then as whole salted anchovies or as essence. Two anchovy fillets mashed, or a teaspoon of anchovy paste, gives the same background savour without reading as fish.
- Oysters and hard eggsAdd these at the very end and only to heat through. Oysters stiffen to rubber in a few minutes in a simmering stew, and quartered hard-boiled eggs are meant as garnish, not as an ingredient to be cooked.
- Thickening and yieldBeurre manié (equal butter and flour kneaded cold, whisked in off the boil) or arrowroot slaked in cold water; arrowroot gives a clearer, glossier sauce but thins if boiled long. A hare will generally stretch to six or so, with the currant jelly passed separately.
Close kin to jugged hare: the same dark, spiced, port-enriched stew that was a staple of British game cookery from the eighteenth century onward, when a hare was hung for some days and its blood often saved to thicken the sauce — though neither method here is jugged in the strict sense (cooked in a covered jar set in water) and neither calls for blood as a thickener. The accompaniments are period markers: forcemeat balls fried and finished in the liquor, redcurrant jelly handed round, and bottled sauces from named makers, Reading and Worcester both being commercial products Victorian cooks had come to rely on. The 1859 British Cookery Book collected such receipts from many hands, which may explain why the same dish appears in two or three overlapping versions, one richer and one plainer, set down side by side rather than reconciled.