Lievre à la royale is a traditional French culinary dish.

There are two

interpretations of this dish that both have historic origins. One is a hare in a stew
with garlic and shallots that includes red wine. The other includes meat stuffed
with foie gras and truffles serves in slices and topped with red wine.

It is believed that the royal stewed rabbit meat first appeared in the period of Louis
XIV. Suffering from severe dental disease, Louis XIV lost almost all his teeth in his
forties. He has a hard time chewing food, but he still craves good food. So, for the
toothless Louis XIV, this fragrant, soft and delicious royal braised hare was the
perfect "gluttonous dish". However, there is no record about the specific recipe of this
dish at that time.
Until the 18th century, a culinary genius named Antoine Carême appeared in France.
He served as the personal chef of many royal dignitaries including Emperor
Napoleon, Russian Tsar Alexander II, and Austrian Emperor Francois I. The recipe of
the royal braised hare interpreted by Antoine Carême has been handed down to this
day, and his status as a "royal chef" also makes his royal braised hare recipe more
authoritative. But the chef's recipes are cumbersome and difficult to make and require
a certain amount of skill to succeed. More than a century after Antoine Carême's
death, French senator and gourmand, Aristide Couteaux, improved and simplified the
recipe of the stewed royal hare, and has since split the recipe for the dish. Aristide
Couteaux is much simpler to cook. It eliminates the difficult bone removal process
and fillers. Instead, chopping the hare into large pieces and frying the small vegetables
in a large casserole. Red wine is baked in the oven on a low heat for a long time for
the bones to fall off on their own. In terms of raw materials, truffles and foie gras are
no longer added, but the freshness of wild rabbit meat itself is emphasized. This new
method is popular with modern culinary schools, but it has also generated a lot of
controversy. Traditional gourmets disagree with the practice, criticizing it as not
"royal" at all.
There is a gruesome historical fact about this dish. Traditionally, because of the
importance placed on the hare’s blood for the final sauce, the hare was dispatched by
strangling. The blood is saved and used as a natural thickener and added to the sauce
at a precise temperature. Done incorrectly and the blood will coagulate and create an
unappetizing mess. Another interesting aspect of this dish is the use of bones. When
the hare is butchered, the bones are saved, marinated, and cooked to create the sauce.
As expected of a dish fit for royalty, the preparation is very complicated. First, the
blood is saved. The hare is then deboned carefully. The organs, such as the heart, liver,
lungs and kidneys, are taken out and set aside. These organs are mixed with pork fat,
truffle, the leg meat of the hare, and foie gras for a stuffing. The meat and bones are
then marinated in a mixture of red wine and spices (cloves, coriander, juniper, black
pepper, and cardamom). Interestingly, the bones are hacked with a cleaver to release
the collagen for the sauce before its marinated in the same wine mixture. After
marinating, everything is cooked under a low temperature and slowly for 36 hours.
Adding the sauce is the final step, with the blood incorporated when the dish is ready
to serve.
This dish is judged by whether you can eat the whole dish with just a spoon, since it
has to make meat like creams. Customers are judging it by whether the dish could be
eaten with just a spoon.