18th Century Roast Hare

It's been over a year since my last post (to be fair, "inconstant" is in the title of this blog), but a bunch of life stuff has cleared out of the way, and I am back int he kitchen!

On Sunday I grabbed a rabbit from the farmer's market, and decided to cook it based on a  recipe in Hanah Glasse.

The recipe for rabbit said "as per a hare, but lard it." I looked up larding and found this:

Sadly, I don't have a larding needle--make that I *didn't* have a larding needle, as it turns out Amazon sells everything.  Still, until it arrives, larding is out, so I just rubbed the rabbit with melted fat and moved onto the hare recipe:


The pudding:

• 4oz suet
• 4oz finely grated bread crumbs
• 4oz chicken livers
• large handful of parsley
• 2 tbspn herbs de provence
• zest of one lemon
• teaspoon of nutmeg
• salt and pepper to taste

There are some changes from the above recipe.  My rabbit was missing a liver, so I added the same weight in chicken livers (one rabbit liver is 4-6 ounces for a 4lb rabbit).  Also, for the "sweet herbs" I used a herbs de provence mix that contained marjoram, thyme, savory, and rosemary.

The nutmeg can be easy to over do, so start with 1/2 the amount above and fry a small amount up to taste the seasoning, then readjust.

Here's what it all looked like before I added the 2 eggs:

Fun note, according the Collonial Williamsburg, 18th century recipes use Medium eggs, as opposed to the XL or Jumbo from the market.  Looking at an egg size chart I saw that the difference between Medium and the Large eggs I had from the farmer's market were only marginally different, so I just stayed with two.

When I started this I pictured a stuffing, but it became rapidly clear that I was stuffing my rabbit with sausage.  

Cooking:

After all this, the cooking itself was easy.  I dry-brined the rabbit for 3 hours (1/2 teaspoon kosher salt per pound) because I know rabbit is dry, then I decided to smoke it at 325F until the stuffing reached 165F.  Smoking seemed the closest equivalent available to me to either an earthen fire over or spit roasting.

Here is the final product:

How'd It Taste?

The pudding was a big hit, very tasty and not as oddly seasoned as we all expected.  The rabbit was dry, but good with gravy.  I blame the dryness on food safety, and it's why I never stuff anything anymore.  Rabbit is best at 160F, but by the time my stuffing reaches 165F the meat was at 175F.

Hannah Glasse had probably never heard of food safety and just cooked until the meat was delish.