Skin and clean the rabbits; cut into pieces at the joints; season well. Heat 2 tablespoonfuls of drippings in a stew-pan; add the rabbits, 1 onion and 2 cloves of garlic sliced fine, 1 bay-leaf, 2 sprigs of parsley and thyme. Let all brown a few minutes; then add 1 cup of hot water and cook slowly until tender. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter; add a glass of claret; boil up and serve.
A plain braise that depends almost entirely on how long the rabbit gets. The original gives no time at all, and the difference between farmed and wild is the difference between an hour and two and a half.
- Quantity and yield"Rabbits" is plural, so at least two animals, and 2 tablespoons of fat with 1 cup of water suggests a modest pan; two rabbits would plausibly serve four to six. Sizes are guesswork, since the recipe gives none. With a single farmed rabbit you may want less liquid or the sauce will be thin.
- A glass of claretClaret is red Bordeaux. A "glass" is not a fixed period measure: a wineglassful is often reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though larger glasses were meant too, so anything from a scant quarter cup to half a cup is defensible. Any dry red will do the same work; add it at the end as written, then boil a minute or two so it does not taste raw.
- DrippingsBeef or pork drippings, saved from roasting. Lard, bacon fat or a neutral oil with a knob of butter all substitute directly. Two tablespoons is enough only if the pan is heavy and just wide enough to hold the pieces in one layer.
- Cooking timeFarmed rabbit is tender in 45 minutes to 1 hour of gentle simmering. Wild rabbit wants 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours and may need extra hot water partway through; the recipe does not say which is intended. Test the thigh: the meat should pull from the bone without shredding.
- Keep it slow"Cook slowly" is the hinge. Rabbit is very lean and a rolling boil turns the loin dry and stringy long before the legs are done. Hold it at a bare tremble, covered, or move the pan to a 300F oven.
- Cutting at the jointsFront legs, hind legs, and the saddle cut across into two or three pieces. The saddle cooks fastest, so lift those pieces out when they are done and return them to the sauce at the end.
- ThickeningFlour and butter here is probably beurre manié — about 1 tablespoon of each mashed to a paste and whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces — though a cooked flour-and-butter roux would answer as well. That amount suits roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups of finished sauce.
- Garlic and herbsTwo cloves is modest for two rabbits; three or four is not out of character. Tie the bay, parsley and thyme with string so they come out whole rather than fishing for stems at the end.
- Season wellThe instruction is doing real work. Salt the pieces before browning, then taste again after the wine has boiled up — lean meat and a reduced sauce both take more salt than you expect.
Rabbit was cheap meat across nineteenth-century Europe, wild where there was land to shoot over and hutch-raised in back gardens where there was not, and French cookery kept it firmly in the repertoire. The method here is the standard domestic sauté-then-braise: fat, aromatics, a brown, a little liquid, a thickening of flour and butter, a splash of wine to finish. Claret, the British term for red Bordeaux, signals the book's audience more than its kitchen — this is a French dish explained to English-speaking readers. The volume itself belongs to a popular early twentieth-century genre, the dish-a-day calendar cookbook, which offered a different nation each evening and treated "French" as a single cuisine. Rabbit's reputation as everyday food held in France well into the twentieth century.