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December 28
Menu: Belgian Hare, en Casserole; Scalloped Potatoes; Braised Celery; Pineapple and Celery Salad; Lemon Pudding, Caramel Sauce; Coffee Belgian Hare, en Casserole-Separate hare into joints; season with salt, paprika and red pepper, and saute in 1/4 cup Crisco with 2 slices of bacon cut in dice to golden brown. Put hare in casserole with 1 cup hot water and put on cover. Bake 30 minutes, then add 2 tablespoons Crisco rubbed into 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup water, seasoning to taste,
A plain braise from Crisco's Calendar of Dinners, written for a cook who already knew how long a rabbit takes. The text as printed breaks off mid-sentence after the thickening is added, so the finish has to be inferred.
- Belgian Hare is not a hareDespite the name, the Belgian Hare is a domestic rabbit breed, bred for meat and much promoted in America around 1900. The recipe is a rabbit recipe. A whole farmed rabbit of 2 1/2 to 3 lb is the modern equivalent; true wild hare is darker, stronger and much tougher.
- CriscoThe book exists to sell it. Crisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold and still neutral in flavour; 1/4 cup is 4 tablespoons. Butter or a mild oil browns the joints just as well, and butter will taste better with the bacon.
- "En casserole" means the covered potIn 1913 the casserole was the vessel, usually a lidded earthenware or enamelled dish, not a genre of baked food. A Dutch oven or any covered braiser does the job, and it can go from stovetop browning straight into the oven.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A covered braise of this kind belongs in a moderate oven, 325–350F, hot enough to hold a bare simmer under the lid and no hotter.
- Thirty minutes is not enoughThat timing suits a very young rabbit at most. Farmed rabbit joints generally need 45 to 60 minutes covered before the meat loosens from the bone; wild hare wants 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Add the flour-and-fat thickening near the end, once the meat is nearly done, rather than at the half-hour mark as written.
- The thickeningTwo tablespoons of fat rubbed into two tablespoons of flour is a beurre manié, stirred into the hot liquid in small pieces so it disperses. It needs a few minutes at a simmer to lose the raw flour taste; adding it and pulling the pot immediately leaves the sauce pasty.
- Loin and legs cook differentlySeparating into joints gives you saddle pieces that are lean and quick and hind legs that are slow. Take the saddle out when it is just done and return it to the sauce at the end if you want it tender rather than dry.
- Seasoning"Paprika and red pepper" are two things here: sweet Hungarian-style paprika for colour, and cayenne for heat. Use a generous teaspoon of the first and a pinch of the second.
- YieldOne rabbit, jointed, serves four modestly or three well. Serve with something to take the sauce — noodles, mashed potato or bread.
The Belgian Hare boom is one of the odder episodes in American livestock history: the breed was imported from England in the late 1880s and set off a speculative craze around 1900, with breeders' clubs, shows and animals changing hands for extraordinary sums before the bubble collapsed. The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble two years after Crisco itself went on sale, and its Calendar of Dinners section assigned a full menu to every day of the year — the December 30 dinner here among them — with the new shortening standing in wherever an older cook would have reached for butter or lard. Rabbit was still ordinary domestic meat then, cheap and widely raised in backyard hutches; it slipped out of the American repertoire over the following decades in a way it never did in France or Belgium.