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Quenelles of Rabbit
Cut the meat from a boiled rabbit, and carefully remove every particle of skin and sinew. Pound it till smooth, and press it through a sieve. Put a calf's udder into a stewpan with as much cold water as will cover it. Let it boil gently, and when it is done enough, take it out and let it cool. Trim away the upper parts, cut it up small, pound it in a mortar, and then press it through a sieve. Chop up six small mushrooms, and put them into a stewpan, with a piece of butter the size of an egg, the peel of a quarter of a thinly-sliced lemon, a chopped shallot, a pinch of powdered thyme, a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and a little pepper and salt. Steam these ingredients over a gentle fire for ten minutes. Soak the crumb of two French rolls in milk. When quite soft, put them into a napkin, and squeeze the moisture from them. Put them into the stewpan with the seasoning, add a table-spoonful of white sauce, and beat the mixture over a gentle fire until it is quite dry and leaves the stewpan with the spoon. Take it from the fire, and mix with it the yolk of an egg. Put the panada, the calf's udder that has passed through the sieve, and the pounded meat into a cool place, and leave them for an hour. To make the quenelles, take an equal quantity (not weight) of each of the three, pound together with a whole egg, and press the mixture through a sieve. Poach a little piece in boiling water, and if it is properly seasoned, firm, and light, mould the quenelles. Poach them in boiling water, serve on a hot dish, pouring over them good white sauce flavoured with mushrooms. Poach the quenelles till they are firm, which will be in from three to twelve minutes, according to size. Probable cost of rabbit, 7d. to 10d. per pound.
A classic three-part forcemeat: pounded meat, a bread panada, and a fat (here calf's udder). The proportions are by volume, not weight, and the test poach is the step that decides whether the batch works.
- Calf's udderA neutral fat used for pale quenelles in Victorian kitchens, and effectively unobtainable now. An equal volume of cold unsalted butter creamed smooth, or a mix of butter and a little heavy cream, plays the same role; finely pounded pork back fat is another substitute, though it darkens the mixture slightly.
- "Equal quantity (not weight)"The three components are matched by volume rather than weight: equal volumes of pounded rabbit, sieved fat, and panada.
- The test poachPoach a teaspoon of the mixture before moulding the rest, as directed. If it falls apart, work in a little more panada or another egg yolk; if it is rubbery and tight, loosen with a spoonful of cream. This is the hinge of the recipe and skipping it risks the whole batch.
- "Poach in boiling water"The recipe says boiling water, but a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil is safer, since violent water can break the quenelles apart. The three-to-twelve-minute spread is by size, as the recipe states: small quenelles at the short end, large ones at the long.
- French rollsThe soft white crumb of a white roll; a stale baguette or a soft white loaf with the crust cut away works the same way.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. "Steam over a gentle fire" means sweat the mushrooms and aromatics covered over low heat so they soften without colouring.
- Drying the panadaBeat it over low heat until it forms a single mass that pulls cleanly from the pan, exactly as for choux paste. Any residual moisture will slacken the finished forcemeat.
- Food processorThe mortar and sieve can be replaced by a processor, working the chilled meat and fat separately and then together, but keep everything cold and pass the final mixture through a fine sieve or drum sieve if you want the smooth texture the recipe is after.
Quenelles belong to the French repertoire that English cookery books absorbed wholesale, and the three-part forcemeat, meat, panada and fat bound with egg, was taught as a foundation technique rather than a single dish. Calf's udder, t tine de veau, was prized precisely because it was bland and pale, and it is often said to have been used for white quenelles before butter and cream displaced it entirely; its disappearance from butchers' counters is a fair measure of how much offal has left the English-speaking kitchen. Rabbit here is a cheap meat put to expensive-looking use, the point of the exercise: the price note of 7d. to 10d. per pound puts it roughly level with contemporary beef, and the labour of pounding and sieving was supplied by a kitchen with staff.