No. 2076

Hare's Back Roasted with Cream

Rable de Lievre Roti a la Crème

The hares used for roasting should be chosen particularly tender. Suppress the shoulders, legs, and neck, leaving the back whole; remove the fillet skin delicately so as to be able to lard the meats with larding pork (No. 3, Fig. 52); season and lay the back in a small baking pan to mask over with butter and roast in the oven for twenty-five to thirty minutes while basting at times. Drain off the back and dress it on a dish, pour off half the fat and put into the pan a few spoonfuls of half-glaze (No. 400); boil up for five minutes to detach the glaze from the bottom of the pan, then strain and let reduce for a few moments, adding a gill of raw cream; finish the sauce with a dash of vinegar.

← No. 2075 Jugged Hare Rabbit, Hare & Squirrel No. 2077 Young Hare a la Castiglione—Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer assumes a butchered hare on the premises and a stockpot of half-glaze already at hand. Both are substitutions in a modern kitchen, and the roast itself is a fast, high-heat job on very lean meat.

The hinge: do not overcook itA hare saddle is almost fatless and turns dry and livery the moment it goes past medium rare. Pull it at 130-135F at the thickest part of the loin and rest it 8-10 minutes; 25 to 30 minutes is the outer limit even for a large saddle.
Oven heatRanhofer gives no oven temperature. In a modern oven, 425-450F will colour the fat-covered surface in the time the loin needs.
"Suppress" and "rable"Suppress here means remove. Rable is the saddle: the whole back from the last rib to the hips, both loins on the bone. Shoulders, legs and neck are set aside for jugging or a sauté.
The fillet skinThis is the tough silverskin membrane over the loins. Slide a thin knife under it and peel it off; leaving it on makes the saddle bow and contract in the heat.
Larding and larding porkLarding pork is fresh unsmoked back fat, cut into lardons and threaded through the meat with a larding needle. Barding is easier and nearly as effective: lay thin sheets of fatback or unsmoked streaky bacon over the loins and tie them on.
Half-glazeNo. 400 is demi-glace, a reduced brown sauce built on veal stock and espagnole. A well-reduced veal or game stock, thick enough to coat a spoon, does the same work; a few spoonfuls is all the recipe wants.
A gill of creamA gill is half a cup, or 4 fl oz. 'Raw' cream here appears to mean simply uncooked cream rather than unpasteurised; heavy cream is the closest modern grade. Ranhofer adds it to the reducing sauce and finishes with the dash of vinegar, which cuts the cream against the game.
SourcingWild hare is not a supermarket item in the United States; game dealers sell imported European hare, usually frozen. A farmed rabbit saddle works with the same method but is paler, milder and smaller, so shorten the roasting to about 15-18 minutes.
YieldOne hare saddle serves two generously, three at a table with other courses. Carve the loins off the bone in long slices and spoon the sauce around, not over, the meat.

A Little History

This is No. 2076 of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its placement among jugged hare and hare a la Castiglione shows how routinely game appeared on an American luxury menu of the period. The saddle was generally treated as the prime cut of the hare: tender enough for the dry heat of a roast, while the hard-worked legs and shoulders went into long braises. Pairing it with cream and a sharpening dash of vinegar is often associated with the game cookery of the north and east of France, where soured cream, redcurrant or vinegar are used against the strong, dark flavour of hare. Ranhofer's cross-references to numbered preparations, here to his half-glaze at No. 400, are a reminder that the book was written for a professional brigade with those bases standing ready, not for a household cook starting from nothing.