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Hares Backs with Poivrade Sauce
Remove the backs of a couple of hares, lard them with strips of firm bacon fat, wrap them round with buttered or oiled paper, place them on the spit in front of a clear fire, and roast until done. About five minutes before taking them from the fire, remove the paper so as to glaze them with thin liquor, put them on a dish, and serve poivrade sauce in a sauceboat.
A spit-roast saddle of hare, larded and paper-wrapped, from a kitchen that still cooked game in front of an open fire. The whole thing hinges on stopping while the meat is still pink.
- What "backs" meansThe back is the saddle, or râble: the loin section from the end of the ribs to the hips, with the belly flaps trimmed. Two saddles from average hares serve four.
- SourcingEuropean brown hare is sold frozen by game dealers; American jackrabbit is not a commercial item. A whole rabbit saddle can stand in, but it is paler, leaner and cooks faster still.
- Bacon fat for larding"Firm bacon fat" here means the hard fat from a side of fat bacon or salt pork, not thin streaky breakfast bacon; fresh fatback serves the same purpose. If larding with a needle is impractical, cold sheets of fatback tied over the saddle do the same work.
- Fire to ovenWithout a spit, roast on a rack at 450F for roughly 15 to 20 minutes for a hare saddle, less for rabbit. Pull the paper for the last five minutes as written, so the surface glazes.
- The hinge: internal temperatureHare loin is very lean and turns dry and livery past medium. Take it out at 130 to 135F at the thickest part of the loin and rest it ten minutes; "until done" in a recipe of this period is no reliable guide to modern doneness either way.
- Buttered paperThe original barding paper was parchment or kitchen paper brushed with butter, and parchment is the closest modern equivalent; foil traps steam and does much less to encourage browning.
- Poivrade sauceA separate preparation the book assumes you know: a mirepoix sweated in fat, deglazed with vinegar and white wine, moistened with game stock or the marinade, reduced, strained, and finished with crushed black pepper added only at the end so it stays sharp rather than bitter.
- ServingCarve the loins off the backbone in long strips or slice across the bone. Sauce goes in a boat, as directed, not over the meat, which would soften the glaze.
Hare was one of the fixed points of the nineteenth-century game menu, and the saddle was its prize cut; French kitchens called it râble de lièvre and often paired it with poivrade or one of its relatives, sauce chevreuil and sauce venaison, all built on vinegar, pepper and a reduced game stock to cut the richness of dark meat. Poivrade takes its name from poivre, pepper, and belongs to the older family of sharp, spiced sauces that predate the butter-and-cream style; the pepper is added late by convention, since long boiling turns it acrid. The instruction to roast "on the spit in front of" the fire rather than in an oven records the equipment of a kitchen that still had an open hearth. Larding with strips of pork fat was likewise routine for any lean roast, and it is the technique that has vanished more thoroughly than the dish.