No. 2074

Hare a la Chatelaine—Stuffed

Lievre Farci a la Chatelaine

Skin and draw a good hare, not having it too young, lard it with shreds of larding pork (No. 3, Fig. 52), make a hash with its minion fillets, the heart, liver and a few good cooked chicken livers, put this into a vessel and mix in an equal quantity of chopped fat pork, bread-crumb raspings, chopped onions, one egg, salt and thyme. With this dressing fill the hare's stomach, sew up the opening, truss the shoulders, head and legs, then put it into a long braziere, having the bottom covered with fragments of fat pork, minced onions and roots, aromatic herbs and mushroom peelings, add two or three gills of white wine and cover with buttered paper; cover the pan and allow the hare to cook very slowly for two or three hours with fire over, and under or in the oven, adding a little broth or gravy from time to time. When the hare is three-quarters done, lift it out, strain the stock, skim it free of fat and thicken with a little brown sauce (No. 414), then boil again for five minutes. Pour this into the braziere, replace the hare and add two or three dozen fresh peeled mushrooms, then finish cooking all together. Dish up the hare, untruss and surround it with the garnishing and a part of the sauce, serving the remainder separately.

← No. 2073 Grouse or Prairie Hens a la Tzarina—Breasts Rabbit, Hare & Squirrel No. 2075 Jugged Hare →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a whole wild hare, a larding needle and a lidded braising pan buried in coals. The method translates cleanly to a Dutch oven, but the animal itself is the hard part to source.

The animalA European hare is a big animal, roughly 6-10 lb whole and less once dressed, with dark, close-grained, strongly flavoured meat; "not too young" means a mature animal, which needs the long braise. Farmed rabbit at 3-5 lb is the usual substitute and will be done well before the stated hours, so check it early rather than trusting them.
Minion filletsFilets mignons here means the two small strips of tenderloin lying against the spine inside the saddle, not steak. They are pulled out for the stuffing because they overcook long before the legs are tender.
LardingThe cross-reference is to Ranhofer's larding instructions and illustration. Fresh fatback or unsmoked pork belly cut into 1/4-inch lardons works; if you have no needle, drape the hare with thin sheets of fatback or caul fat instead. This is not decorative — hare has very little intramuscular fat and dries out without it.
Gills and vesselsA gill is half a cup, so two or three gills of white wine is 1 to 1 1/2 cups. A braziere is a heavy lidded braising pan — a Dutch oven or covered roaster long enough to take the hare whole. "Buttered paper" is a buttered parchment cartouche laid directly on the meat under the lid.
Fire over and underCoals on the lid and beneath the pan gave gentle all-round heat. Ranhofer gives no temperature; a modern oven around 300F suits "very slowly," with the sauce barely trembling. Three hours is realistic for a mature hare, less for a large rabbit.
Bread-crumb raspings and rootsRaspings are dry crumbs grated from crust — use plain dried breadcrumbs, not fresh. "Roots" means carrot, turnip, parsnip or celeriac, diced small. Mushroom peelings are worth saving for the flavour, but stems do the same job.
Brown sauce No. 414Ranhofer's brown sauce, an espagnole-type preparation and a long job in itself. A cup of good demi-glace, or the strained braising liquid reduced hard and finished with a small beurre manié, gives the same body.
The mushroomsTwo or three dozen mushrooms is a lot — roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb of small button caps. Added at the three-quarter mark they still get a good stretch of cooking, which is enough; put them in at the start and they collapse into the sauce.
Stuffing and donenessThe forcemeat contains raw pork, liver and egg, so it needs to reach 165F at the centre of the cavity. Take the reading there rather than in the leg, since the stuffing lags well behind the meat.
YieldA stuffed hare of this size, with garnish, serves six to eight as a main course.

A Little History

This is No. 2074 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in a chapter that treats hare, rabbit and squirrel as ordinary market game. À la chatelaine means "in the manner of the lady of the manor," one of the many nineteenth-century French garnish names that gestured at aristocratic hospitality; in the more codified classical repertoire that followed, a chatelaine garnish is generally given as artichoke bottoms with a soubise or chestnut element, though the definitions vary, and Ranhofer uses the term loosely here for a stuffed, braised presentation with mushrooms. The technique itself is older than the name: larding a lean carcass, stuffing it with a forcemeat built from its own offal, and braising it slowly on a bed of pork fat and root vegetables is a standard treatment for tough game in French cookery, and it survives because it solves a real problem — a mature wild hare has no fat of its own to keep it from turning to leather.