No. 2075

Jugged Hare

Civet de Lievre

To prepare this dish the hare should not be too tender; those are only desirable when eaten roasted. Skin the hare, draw it well reserving the blood in a small bowl with a dash of vinegar added. Separate the four limbs from the back, cut them up into medium-sized pieces and split the head in two, then cut the back across. Lay these parts in a vessel to season and marinate with a few spoonfuls of brandy, aromatic herbs and sprigs of parsley; leave them in this for five to six hours. Melt in a saucepan half a pound of chopped fat pork, add to it half a pound of bacon cut in flat squares, and as soon as these are browned, remove them with a skimmer, leaving the fat in the saucepan, and to it add the well drained pieces of hare. Fry over a very brisk fire stirring at times, and when the meats are well browned, besprinkle with two spoonfuls of flour; cook this while turning for a few minutes, then moisten the stew to its height, with a third part of good red wine previously boiled in an untinned copper vessel, and two-thirds of broth (No. 194a), adding both very slowly. Stir the liquid until it boils and let it continue thus for ten minutes; withdraw the saucepan to a slower fire, put in a bunch of aromatic herbs, two or three small onions and mushroom parings. Continue the cooking until the meats are partly done, then set a large colander on top of a vessel and pour into it the stew; return the sauce to a sautoir, adding to it a few spoonfuls of red wine, boil the same as before, add a few spoonfuls of gravy (No. 404) to enrich it, reduce for a few moments, skimming off the fat and put it back into the first saucepan. Take up the pieces of hare one by one, pare them free of all superfluous bone and return them to the sauce, all except the head, and add the bacon and the marinade the hare was in. Place the saucepan on the fire to finish cooking the meats very slowly; twenty minutes before taking off the stew, mix in with it two dozen mushrooms and finish cooking all together. At the last moment thicken the gravy with the blood laid aside, being careful that once this is added not to let it boil again. Dress the meats and bacon on a dish, strain the sauce over and surround with clusters of mushrooms and the same of small onions glazed separately.

← No. 2074 Hare a la Chatelaine—Stuffed Rabbit, Hare & Squirrel No. 2076 Hare's Back Roasted with Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock pots already going, so the recipe leans on cross-references and assumes you know the shape of a civet. The whole dish turns on the final step: the blood liaison must never boil.

The blood is the pointWhisk a little of the hot sauce into the reserved blood first, then stir that back off the heat and hold the pan below a simmer — roughly 160-170F. Above that the proteins seize and the sauce turns grainy and grey instead of glossy and dark. The dash of vinegar in the bowl is what keeps the blood from clotting while it waits.
Sourcing hare and bloodYou will need to order from a game dealer and ask for the hare undressed with the blood saved; supermarket rabbit will not give you either the flavour or the liaison. If no blood is available, finish instead with puréed raw liver or a knob of butter, and accept a lighter sauce.
"Should not be too tender"He means an older animal, and he is right: a mature hare has the connective tissue that makes a civet unctuous. Total braising time runs 2 to 3 hours depending on age, not the vague "partly done" and "finish very slowly" of the text.
Do not boil wine in untinned copperUnlined copper and acidic wine leach copper into the liquid, which is one reason unlined pans have largely left the kitchen, though they survive for jam and sugar work. Boil the wine in stainless or enamelled cast iron; you gain the same softened, less raw flavour with none of the metal.
Fat pork and bacon"Chopped fat pork" is fatback or fresh pork fat rendered for its lard; the half pound of bacon should be a slab of unsmoked or lightly smoked belly cut into lardons, not modern thin-sliced breakfast bacon. Half a pound of each is generous for one hare — three or four ounces of rendered fat is plenty to brown in.
The cross-referenced liquidsNo. 194a is Ranhofer's broth and No. 404 his gravy; a good unsalted beef or game stock and a few spoonfuls of demi-glace or heavily reduced stock cover both. "Moisten to its height" means liquid just level with the meat, about a third red wine to two-thirds stock.
Mushroom parings and mushroomsParings are the trimmings and peelings once routinely saved for flavour; a few sliced stems do the same work. The "two dozen mushrooms" are small whole button mushrooms, added in the last twenty minutes so they hold their shape.
The headIt goes into the pot for flavour and body and is set aside when the stew is strained rather than returned to the sauce; splitting it is a butchery job you can hand to the dealer.
YieldOne hare of 6 to 8 lb serves six to eight. Serve with something starchy and plain — boiled potatoes, noodles or fried croûtons — since the sauce is rich and concentrated.

A Little History

Civet takes its name from cive, the old French word for onion (as in chive), and traditionally denotes a game stew built on onions, salt pork and a sauce thickened at the end with the animal's own blood. The English kitchen arrived at nearly the same dish from another direction and called it jugged hare, after the tall covered jug or jar set in a water bath in which it was once cooked — which is why Charles Ranhofer's French title sits under an English heading here. Ranhofer was chef at Delmonico's in New York for most of the last third of the nineteenth century, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole restaurant repertoire, cross-references and all. Hare was still ordinary market game in American cities then; the instruction to reserve the blood at the moment of dressing tells you that the cook expected to receive the animal whole and undrawn, a chain of supply that has largely disappeared.