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Stewed Rabbit
Melt 4 tablespoons Crisco in saucepan; joint rabbit and fry quickly in Crisco, then fry 1 sliced onion until browned, stir in 2 tablespoons flour and brown flour; now add gradually 2 cups water and stir till smooth, when boiling add salt, pepper, and paprika to taste, and 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; simmer slowly 1 1/2 hours. Dish and strain over gravy.
A plain brown stew of the Crisco-cookbook era, written for a cook who already knew how to break down a rabbit. Two things decide the result: the colour you take the flour to, and how long the particular rabbit actually needs.
- Brown the flour properlyThe instruction to "brown flour" is the hinge of the dish — with the browned onion it supplies most of the colour and depth in a gravy otherwise made of water. Stir it in the fat over medium heat until it smells nutty and turns the shade of a paper bag, three to five minutes, and do not let it scorch or the gravy will be bitter.
- CriscoCrisco is still sold; it began as a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening, though the modern product has been reformulated. The book appears to be a Crisco promotional volume, which is why the fat is named here. Any neutral fat works, and 4 tablespoons of butter or oil, or rendered bacon fat, gives more flavour.
- Simmering time depends on the rabbit1 1/2 hours suits an older wild rabbit. Farmed rabbit, which is what most butchers sell, is tender in 45 to 60 minutes and will go dry and stringy if held at a simmer for ninety. Test the thigh with a fork and stop when it yields.
- LiquidTwo cups of water barely covers a jointed rabbit in a wide pan. Use a pan that fits snugly, keep the lid on, and add hot water if the level drops below the meat. Stock instead of water is a straightforward improvement.
- JointingTwo front legs, two hind legs, and the saddle cut across into two or three pieces; the ribcage and flaps can go in for flavour and be discarded. Pat the pieces dry before they meet the fat or they will steam rather than brown.
- "Dish and strain over gravy"Lift the meat onto a warmed platter and pour the gravy through a sieve over it, leaving the onion and parsley behind. If you would rather keep them, skip the sieve — the strained version is simply the more formal presentation of the period.
- YieldOne rabbit of about 2 1/2 to 3 lb serves three, four if stretched with potatoes, noodles or dumplings, none of which the original mentions.
This comes from one of the cookbooks Procter & Gamble commissioned to introduce Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening it launched in 1911; Marion Harris Neil wrote several of them. The dish itself is much older than the fat it is fried in — a jointed rabbit browned in dripping and simmered in a flour-thickened gravy is the standard English and American treatment, and rabbit remained ordinary butcher's meat in the United States well into the 1940s, cheap and widely available in ways it no longer is. The stew's method is the same one applied to older fowl and cheap beef in the same period: brown the flour for colour, brown the onion for sweetness, and let time do the rest, since neither cut nor animal could be relied on to be young.