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RABBIT (a la Minute)
Cut a fresh young rabbit into neat joints. Dissolve two or three ounces of butter in a stewpan, put in the pieces of rabbit, and turn them about until they are lightly browned all over. Pour over them as much stock or water as will cover them, and add a little pepper and salt, a blade of mace, two table-spoonfuls of chopped parsley, and three or four mushrooms if these are to be had. Let all simmer gently together until the rabbit is done enough, and, ten minutes before it is taken from the fire, thicken the gravy with a dessert-spoonful of flour. Serve very hot. A glassful of sherry may be added to the sauce or not. Time altogether, forty minutes. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A plain brown fricassee that stands or falls on the age of the rabbit: "a fresh young rabbit" is not a stylistic flourish but the whole condition of the forty-minute cooking time.
- Which rabbitFarmed rabbit of about 2.5-3 lb, jointed into two forelegs, two hind legs and the saddle in two or three pieces, will be tender inside the stated time. A wild rabbit of unknown age needs an hour and a half or more at a bare simmer, and no amount of browning will shorten that.
- Dessert-spoonfulTwo level teaspoons. That is a light thickening for a pint or so of liquid — a loose gravy rather than a sauce that coats.
- Adding the flourShaking dry flour into hot stock will lump. Work the flour into an equal weight of soft butter and whisk the paste in piece by piece, or slake it with a little of the hot liquid first. The ten minutes at the end is enough to cook out the raw taste.
- Blade of maceOne dried strip of the aril from a nutmeg. Fish it out before serving. A generous pinch of ground mace is the substitute if blades are not to hand.
- A glassful of sherryA Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz. Adding it with the stock rather than at the end gives the raw spirit time to cook down; a dry amontillado suits the mace better than a cream sherry.
- Stewpan and browningA wide, heavy pan so the joints sit in one layer. Two or three ounces of butter over a lively heat will brown but also risks burning the milk solids — clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of oil, holds up better.
- Stock or waterWater gives a thin result. Chicken stock is the practical choice; if the rabbit came with its liver and kidneys, brown those alongside and lift them out for the cook.
- YieldTwo to three as written, which is honest for one rabbit. It wants boiled potatoes or plain rice to take up the gravy.
Rabbit was a familiar and relatively inexpensive meat in a late-Victorian British kitchen, though Cassell's puts this dish at 2s. 6d. for two or three people, no trifling sum in such a household; rabbits hung in every game dealer's and many butchers' shops in season. The name à la minute is borrowed from the French kitchen, where it marks a dish cooked to order at speed rather than braised for hours; here it distinguishes this quick brown stew from the long-cooked rabbit dishes of the day. The technique — brown in butter, moisten, aromatise with mace and parsley, thicken at the end — is applied to whatever the household could get cheaply. The line "three or four mushrooms if these are to be had" is a reminder that cultivated mushrooms were still an occasional luxury rather than a year-round staple.