No. 2078

Epigrammes of Young Hares a la Polignac

Epigrammes de Leverets a la Poignancy

Raise the fillets and minion fillets from two young hares; suppress the skin and nerves and cut the fillets slanting into two pieces each; beat lightly and pare them all into cutlet form; season with salt, pepper, fine spices and truffles cut in thin shreds. Mince the fragments of the meat, add a third as much pork tenderloin and chop the two well together with as much chopped fat pork as fresh pork; season with salt, pepper and nutmeg, adding some reduced espagnole sauce (No. 414). Divide this preparation into twelve parts, have as many squares of "crepine" or caul fat four inches by five spread out on a cloth, on each one lay half of its intended forcemeat, on top the pared cutlet-form fillet and then the remainder of the forcemeat; fold the "crepine" or caul fat into an oval shape, lay them on a baking sheet, baste over with butter, bestrew with bread-crumbs and cook in the oven. Dish them up in a circle intercalated with cutlets made of very delicate hare quenelle forcemeat (No. 91) made with the parings, dip in eggs, bread-crumb over and then fry in olive oil. Pour into the center of the center of the circle a little marinade sauce (No. 496) with chopped truffles added. The quenelle forcemeat cutlets can be replaced by others made of hare croquette preparation (No. 885).

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots already going, so half the work here is deciding what to substitute for the cross-referenced sauces. The dish itself is straightforward: a boned hare cutlet sandwiched in forcemeat, wrapped in caul, crumbed and roasted.

The garbled titleThe heading in this scan reads "a la Poignancy," an optical-character misreading of a la Polignac. Nothing in the method depends on it.
What an epigramme isIn classical French cookery an épigramme means two different cuts or preparations of the same animal served together on one dish — here the caul-wrapped fillets alternating with breaded forcemeat cutlets. It is a plating convention, not a cooking technique.
LeveretsA leveret is a young hare, generally taken as one in its first year. Wild hare is a game-dealer item in most of the US; farmed rabbit is the practical stand-in, though it is milder and even leaner. Two animals give the twelve pieces the recipe calls for.
Fillets and minion filletsThe fillet is the loin strip along the back; the filet mignon here is the small tenderloin lying beneath it, not the beef cut of the same name. "Suppress the nerves" means strip the silverskin, which will otherwise contract and buckle the cutlets.
Fine spicesEpices fines is a house spice blend, pepper, nutmeg and clove with other warm spices and dried herbs, of the same family as quatre epices. A pinch per portion is plenty; it is a background note.
Caul fatCrepine is the lacy membrane from around a pig's stomach, sold frozen by butchers and needing a soak in warm salted water to unfold without tearing. It bastes the lean hare as it renders and then all but disappears; there is no true substitute, though a thin sheet of barding fat will keep the parcels from drying.
Oven heatNo temperature is given. Treat these as roasted parcels at 400F for roughly 20-25 minutes, until the crumb is browned; because the forcemeat is raw minced pork, take the centre to 160F rather than leaving it pink.
The saucesEspagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce, reduced here to a paste stiff enough to bind the forcemeat — a well-reduced demi-glace does the same job. The marinade sauce (No. 496) is a sharp brown sauce built on the strained game marinade; a demi-glace sharpened with red wine vinegar and a little of the wine and aromatics the hare was steeped in gets you to the same place.
YieldTwelve parcels, with forcemeat cutlets set between them, makes a service for six to eight as a main course, or twelve as a plated course in a long menu.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads less like a cookbook than an inventory of a professional repertoire, its 3,500-odd numbered entries cross-referencing one another the way a kitchen's mise en place does. Dishes named a la Polignac honour the French ducal family of that name, one of a great many aristocratic labels attached to garnishes and preparations in the nineteenth century; the naming was largely a matter of kitchen convention rather than any documented connection to the household in question. The hare chapter is a reminder of how much game passed through American restaurant kitchens before market hunting was curtailed el hare, rabbit and squirrel all sat on the same page, and a chef could count on receiving whole animals and boning them himself. Wrapping a lean cut in caul fat with a forcemeat around it is much older than Delmonico's and is close kin to the crepinette.