A year's cookery

Dinner. — Soles — Filleted, Rolled, and Baked (March 1st); Maitre d’Hotel Sauce (May 6tli). Jugged Hare. — This is really the best way of cooking a hare. Make the hare forcemeat {see recipe given below). Skin and empty the hare, and wipe it inside and out with a damp cloth. Cut it into neat pieces about the size of a small egg, and turn these about in a frying-pan over the fire with a little dripping till they are equally browned all over. Drain them from the fat, and put them into a wide-mouthed earthen jar ; pour a glass of port upon them, cover the jar closely, and let the hare soak in the wine for twenty minutes. Cut the steak, bought yesterday, into very thin slices two inches long and an inch and a half wide. Spread a little forcemeat upon each slice, roll it neatly, and fasten with a small skewer. Fry the rolls in the fat till they also are brown, then put them with the hare. Have ready some good bone stock, strongly flavoured with onions. Pour a little of this into the pan in which the hare and the pieces of meat were fried, scrape the bottom to obtain all the flavour and gravy, pour the stock over the hare, adding more stock to cover it entirely. Throw in six cloves, two bay-leaves, an inch of stick cinnamon, the juice of half a lemon, and a little pepper and salt. Sprinkle a table-spoonful of forcemeat over all. Put the lid again on the jar, place it up to its neck in a stewpan of boiling water, and keep the water boiling round it for an hour and a half. Make all that remains of the forcemeat into balls the size of marbles. Fry them in hot fat, and put them into the jar a few minutes before the hare is served. Thicken the gravy with a little arrowroot. Put the pieces on a hot dish, place the forcemeat balls round, pour a little gravy over the meat, and send the rest to table in a tureen. Send red currant jelly as an accompaniment. If more convenient, the jar containing' the hare can be placed in the oven in a dripping tin filled with boiling water, care being taken to keep up the supply of water round the jar. When this plan is adopted the hare will need to be cooked two hours and a half instead of one hour and a Y half. The jar chosen for this purpose must be of a good size, as it is important that the pieces of hare should not be closely packed, but that there should be plenty of room for the gravy to run between the pieces of meat. It should have a tightly-fitting cover belonging to it, and if this is not at hand, two or three folds of brown paper must be tied over it. Where the family is small the beef in this recipe may be omitted. It will, however, make the hare go much further, and excellent soup can be made of the remains. To make Hare Forcemeat , mince finely a quarter of a pound of beef suet and two ounces of raw lean ham. Mix, and add a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley and a tea-spoonful of mixed savoury herbs. If dried herbs are used, such as are sold in bottles at the grocer’s, two tea-spoonfuls will be required. Add about two inches of thin lemon-rind, chopped very small, five ounces of fine bread-crumbs, and a little pepper and salt. Bind the mixture together with the yolks of two eggs. Potato Mould (October 23rd) ; Stewed Celery (December 2nd) ; Apple Mould (September 15th), made yesterday ; Custard (August 10th) ; Cheese (June 8th).