Civet a French term which is usually met nowadays in the phrase civet de lièvre, which is a kind of hare stew whose sauce has been thickened with the animal’s blood. However, in the early Middle Ages civets were made with eggs, veal, oysters, and much besides. As the author of the menagier de paris (14th century) explained to his young bride, the essential features of the civet were simply some fried onions and the use of breadcrumbs to bind the sauce of whatever dish was being made. Etymologists would say that if one were to go even further back one would find that a civet was simply a dish containing cives, i.e. onions or spring onions (the word cives varied in meaning in medieval times).
