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Hare Pie
Skin a hare and cut into joints, putting the blood into a basin, or, if more convenient, cut into half-joints. Chop fine one pound of veal and mix it with an equal quantity of sausage meat; chop two shallots, mix them with some finely-minced parsley or thyme, and dust over with salt and pepper; chop also some veal bones into very small pieces. Put a layer of the hare meat at the bottom of the pie-dish, then a layer of the sausage and veal mince, sprinkle over with the parsley and shallot, and cover the whole with some bacon. When the dish is nearly full add the blood and a half-pint of Madeira, put three bay leaves on the top, cover over with the lid, seal it hermetically with paste made of flour and water and bake in a slow oven for ten hours. It is usually put in a baker's oven and left there for the night. The veal bones should be added to the meat and put about it indiscriminately.
A luted terrine of hare in the old English manner, written for a kitchen that could park a dish in a cooling bread oven overnight. Almost everything that needs translating here is about the vessel, the heat and the blood.
- The hinge: the sealThe flour-and-water paste is a luting paste, not pastry — it is a gasket that keeps steam and Madeira inside for the whole long cooking, and it is discarded, not eaten. Roll it into a rope, press it into the join between dish and lid, and expect it to bake to a hard grey crust.
- "A slow oven" and ten hoursA slow oven is usually reckoned somewhere in the 250-325F range, but the recipe describes a baker's oven left overnight, which starts warm and falls steadily through the night. Ten hours at a true, steady 300F will dry the hare; nearer 250F is closer to what the original produced, and a heavy covered dish will be done in 4 to 5 hours at 300F if you would rather not run it overnight.
- Hare, and what to use insteadEuropean hare is dark, strong and much leaner than rabbit; it comes from a game dealer, and may be sold frozen or already jointed. A whole rabbit of 3 lb works but gives a paler, milder pie and needs the shorter cooking above.
- The bloodIt is the thickener and the source of the dark, faintly metallic gravy that defines the dish. Blood from a freshly killed hare is not something a modern cook collects; ask the dealer to save it, and add a spoonful of vinegar to keep it from clotting. Without it the pie still works, it is simply lighter in colour and thinner in the juices.
- Half a pint of MadeiraOne cup. Use a dry Sercial or a medium Verdelho rather than a sweet cooking Madeira, which will turn the juices cloying over ten hours.
- The veal bonesThey are there for gelatine, which is why they go in "indiscriminately" — scattered so the collagen spreads through the dish. Chopped knuckle or neck bones are right. Fish them out before serving, or warn whoever is eating.
- Sausage meatPlain bulk pork sausage, not seasoned breakfast links or anything with sage-heavy commercial spicing, which will fight the hare. Coarse-ground pork shoulder with salt and pepper is the safer reading.
- The dishA "pie-dish" with a lid here means a lidded earthenware terrine or a heavy casserole with a tight cover — there is no pastry in this recipe at all, despite the name. You will need a deep dish of generous capacity to take a jointed hare plus 2 lb of forcemeat, the bacon and the bones.
- Yield and servingEight to ten portions. It is at its best cold or barely warm the following day, sliced from the dish like a terrine, with pickles or a sharp fruit jelly.
Hare pie is old English farmhouse and gentry cooking, close kin to jugged hare: the animal cooked long and slow in a sealed vessel with its own blood as the thickener. The instruction to send it to "a baker's oven and left there for the night" records a real domestic arrangement he local baker to use the falling heat of his bread oven after the last batch came out, which is exactly the long, gentle, unattended heat such a dish wants.