Jugged Hare
Skin, wipe with a towel dipped in boiling water, to remove the loose hairs, dry thoroughly and cut in pieces, strew with pepper and salt, fry brown, season with two anchovies, a sprig of thyme, a little chopped parsley, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and grated lemon-peel. Put a layer of the pieces with the seasoning into a wide-mouthed jug or a jar, then a layer of bacon sliced very thin, and so on till all is used; add a scant half pint of water, cover the jug close and put in cold water, let boil three or four hours, according to the age of the hare; take the jug out of kettle, pick out the unmelted bacon and make a gravy of a little butter and flour with a little catsup. A tea-spoon of lemon-peel will heighten the flavor. -Mrs. Louise M. Lincoln.
A true jugged hare: the meat is sealed in a covered stoneware jug and cooked in a water bath rather than over direct heat, so the juices concentrate instead of boiling away. Nothing here is difficult, but two or three of the instructions assume equipment and a butcher that no longer exist.
- The hinge: the jug never touches the flameThe jug goes into a kettle of cold water, which is then brought to a boil, so the contents cook at a shade under boiling in their own steam, rendered fat and the scant half pint of water added at the start. Cooking the same mixture straight in a pot over the burner gives you stewed hare, which is a different and looser dish. A tall heatproof jar or a deep glass canning jar with a loose lid, set on a folded towel or a rack in a stockpot, does the job; leave the lid unsealed so pressure cannot build.
- Getting a hareWild hare is rarely on sale in the United States and where it is, it comes frozen and already skinned, so the towel-and-boiling-water step for loose hairs is usually moot. A frozen imported hare of about 5-6 lb, or two farmed rabbits, stands in; rabbit is leaner and milder and will be done nearer the low end of the timing.
- "According to the age of the hare"The recipe allows three or four hours, the longer end for an old wild hare; a young one or a farmed rabbit will be ready sooner. Test the hind leg — the meat should pull from the bone without shredding to threads.
- A scant half pintJust under a cup of water. It looks like too little, and it is meant to; the jug is sealed and the meat and bacon give up a great deal of liquid over three hours.
- Mace and anchoviesMace is the lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold as blades or ground, warmer and lighter than the nutmeg it shares a seed with. The two anchovies are not a fish note but the period's savoury seasoning, the same role Worcestershire sauce plays now; chop or mash them so they dissolve.
- Catsup here is not tomatoCatsup here need not be tomato -- in this period the word could equally mean mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin, dark, salty condiment often used with game. A spoonful of mushroom ketchup or a little Worcestershire sauce gives that flavour; tomato ketchup will sweeten the gravy in a way the recipe does not want.
- The baconBacon of this period was often fatter and saltier than most supermarket streaky. Use a thin-sliced fatty bacon or, better, unsmoked salt pork or pancetta, since the smoke can dominate the mace and cloves. The direction to "pick out the unmelted bacon" means the slices that stayed intact — discard or chop them back in, but keep every drop of the fat for the gravy.
- The gravyStrain the jug liquor, make a light roux with roughly a tablespoon each of butter and flour, and whisk the hot liquor in. Many versions of jugged hare are finished with the animal's blood and a glass of port; this one is not, and ends instead with the optional teaspoon of lemon peel to heighten the flavour.
- YieldA hare of this size serves four to six, with mashed potato, forcemeat balls or plain boiled root vegetables. Redcurrant jelly on the side is the standard accompaniment.
Jugging is often said to be among the older English cooking methods to reach American books largely unchanged: the meat sealed in an earthenware jug and set in a cauldron of water, a technique that predates reliable ovens and was still the standard treatment for hare well into the nineteenth century. The dish is usually associated with Hannah Glasse's mid-eighteenth-century Art of Cookery, which does contain a jugged hare, and English cookery writers repeated the method for a long time afterwards. That it appears in The Dixie Cook Book's game chapter, credited to a contributor rather than lifted anonymously, says something about how these compiled community books worked: an English tradition, adapted to whatever the local hunting brought in. Hare was worth the trouble because it is dark, dry and strong-tasting; the long enclosed cooking with bacon fat, anchovy and a battery of spices is doing the work of both tenderising and taming.