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RABBIT (a la Tartare)
Take a rabbit, and bone it; then cut it into pieces, which marinade some hours in parsley, mushrooms, chives, and a clove of garlic, all chopped fine, together with pepper, salt, and oil; dip each piece of rabbit in bread-crumbs, broil, sprinkling the pieces with the marinade. Serve in a sauce a la Tartare (see TARTAR SAUCE). Probable cost, rabbit, 7d. to 9d. per pound.
A late-Victorian grill recipe that assumes a whole rabbit, a butcher who will bone it, and a cook comfortable working over open coals. The method is sound; the vocabulary and the cuts need translating.
- The hinge: keep the meat thin and the heat fastBoned rabbit is very lean and turns dry and stringy the moment it overcooks. Cut the pieces no thicker than about half an inch, flatten the thicker saddle pieces slightly, and give them roughly 4-5 minutes a side under a hot grill or on a chargrill, to an internal 160F.
- "Broil" here means grillIn a British book of this period broiling is cooking over or under direct radiant heat, not the American oven broiler exclusively. A grill pan set close to the element, a ridged cast-iron pan, or a charcoal grill all work.
- Boning a rabbitA whole rabbit runs 2.5-3 lb and yields perhaps 1.25 lb of boneless meat. If you would rather not bone it, ask for boneless hind legs and saddle; the forelegs are fiddly and better saved for a braise or stock.
- The marinade, in quantitiesThe original gives none. For one rabbit, figure 4 tablespoons oil, 3 tablespoons chopped parsley, 3-4 oz mushrooms chopped fine, 2 tablespoons chopped chives, one garlic clove, and salt and pepper. Two to four hours in the refrigerator is ample.
- Crumbs before or afterDipping oily marinated meat straight into crumbs gives a patchy coat. Lift the pieces, scrape the marinade aside to reserve, then press into dry fine breadcrumbs. Panko is too coarse for this; use plain dried crumbs.
- "Sprinkling the pieces with the marinade"This is basting, and it is what keeps lean rabbit from drying. Spoon the reserved marinade over during grilling, but stop a minute or two before the end so the herbs do not scorch.
- Sauce a la TartarePeriod versions are generally a mayonnaise sharpened with mustard and vinegar, often with capers, gherkins, and chopped herbs; check the book's own TARTAR SAUCE entry, which the recipe cross-references. Any good modern tartare is a fair substitute; it should be served cold against the hot meat.
- The price noteSevenpence to ninepence a pound is pre-decimal British currency, and reflects a time when rabbit was among the cheapest meats available. Farmed rabbit today is a specialty purchase and priced accordingly.
- YieldOne rabbit prepared this way serves two generously or three as part of a larger meal.
"A la tartare" in nineteenth-century cookery signals a specific formula rather than a nationality: meat seasoned sharply, crumbed, grilled, and sent up with a cold piquant sauce, the treatment applied most famously to chicken. Cassell's was written when rabbit was ordinary, cheap food in Britain, and the book carries a number of rabbit entries covering stewing, currying, potting and roasting. The marinade of parsley, mushroom, chives and garlic and the crumb coating are there to give character to a lean meat. The sauce belongs to the same French kitchen vocabulary that gave English cooks remoulade, cold mayonnaise-based sauces built to accompany fried or grilled things.