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Jugging is the process of stewing whole animals, mainly game or fish, for an extended period in a tightly covered container such as a casserole or an earthenware jug. In France a similar stew of a game animal (historically thickened with the animal's blood) is known as a civet.
Jugged hare is described in the influential 18th-century cookbook The Art of Cookery, by Hannah Glasse.Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. London, 1747; p. 50 Beginning in the nineteenth century, Glasse has been widely credited with having started the recipe with the words "First, catch your hare". This attribution is apocryphal. Her actual directions are, "Take your Hare when it is cas'd, and make a pudding ..." To 'case' means to take off the skin not. Both the Oxford English Dictionary and The Dictionary of National Biography discuss the attribution.
However, having a freshly caught, or shot, hare enables one to obtain its blood. A freshly killed hare is prepared for jugging by removing its entrails and then hanging it in a larder by its hind legs, which causes the blood to accumulate in the chest cavity. One method of preserving the blood after draining it from the hare (since the hare itself is usually hung for a week or more) is to mix it with red wine vinegar in order to prevent it coagulation, and then to store it in a freezer.
Many other British cookbooks from before the middle of the 20th century have recipes for jugged hare. Merle and Reitch have this to say about jugged hare, for example:
In 2006, a survey of 2,021 people for the television channel UKTV Food found that only 1.6% of the people aged under 25 recognized jugged hare by name. 7 out of 10 of those people stated that they would refuse to eat jugged hare if it were served at the house of a friend or a relative.
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