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Broiled Hare
Rub the legs and shoulders of a hare with butter, lay them in a deep earthenware dish with one large sliced onion, a small quantity of thyme and parsley, a bayleaf, a moderate quantity of pepper and salt, one breakfast cupful of vinegar, and half as much water. Cover the hare with another dish and let it macerate for two days. Drain the pieces of hare, rub again with butter, lay them on a gridiron and broil over a clear fire, turning when done on one side. When cooked lay the pieces on a hot dish covered with a folded napkin and garnished with fried parsley, and serve.
A game marinade and a grill, written for a hotel kitchen with a charcoal range and a cold larder. The two things that need translating are where the meat sits for those two days and how long the legs can stand over direct heat.
- Macerate in the refrigeratorTwo days in a covered dish assumes a cold larder at cellar temperature. Do the marinating in the refrigerator; the vinegar acidifies the surface but will not hold meat safe at room temperature.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces, so read this as about a cup of vinegar to half a cup of water. Cider or red wine vinegar suits hare better than distilled white.
- Non-reactive dishThe earthenware is doing real work here. Keep the acid out of aluminum, cast iron or unlined copper; glass, glazed stoneware or stainless are the modern equivalents.
- Hare, not rabbitA hare is a larger, darker, much leaner animal than a farmed rabbit, commonly in the region of 6 to 9 lb live weight and rather less dressed, and considerably tougher. If you substitute farmed rabbit, cut the marinating time to overnight and expect a paler, milder result.
- The hinge: hind legs resist broilingOnly young hare legs will broil tender. On a mature animal the hind legs are working muscle and are better with moist heat; broil the shoulders and braise the hind legs, or they can come out dry and stringy.
- Gridiron and fireA clear fire means a fire burned down past smoke and flame to steady, even heat, whether coal or charcoal. A charcoal grill is the honest equivalent; under a broiler, keep the pieces 5 to 6 inches from the element and baste with butter, as the meat has almost no fat of its own.
- Cook it throughHare is not served rare. Wild hare and rabbit can carry tularemia, so wear gloves when handling raw carcasses and take the meat to 160-165F at the thickest part of the leg, about 20 to 30 minutes with turning.
- Fried parsleyDry, curly parsley dropped into hot fat for a few seconds until it stops sputtering, then drained. It shatters when crisp; the sprigs must be bone dry or the fat will spit.
- YieldThe legs and shoulders of one hare serve three to four. The saddle, which this recipe leaves aside, is the prime cut and is usually roasted separately.
Oscar Tschirky's book came out of the Waldorf's kitchens in the 1890s, when American hotel dining rooms still ran long game lists in the autumn and winter, and hare arrived from market dealers rather than farms. The vinegar-and-onion soak is a shortened version of the old European treatment of hare, and it runs parallel to the German marinated joint rather than descending from any traced line: acid, aromatics and time were what made a lean, strong-flavoured animal palatable before anyone thought of ageing meat under controlled refrigeration. Fried parsley and a folded napkin under the meat were standard restaurant finishing of the period, the napkin often said to absorb juice so the pieces did not sit and steam on the way to the table.