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Rabbit, Boiled, and Onions
Take one or two rabbits, skin them, and skewer as for boiling; put them into warm water in order to extract all the blood; when they are very white, boil in boiling water and a little salt. They will take from three-quarters to one hour. Make the sauce as follows. Peel a dozen white onions, cut off the tops and tails, then cut them into six pieces each, put them to boil in boiling water and a little salt; when nearly done, drain them on a sieve, put them into a clean towel, squeeze out the water, then chop them very fine; put them into a stewpan with two ounces of butter, let them fry to drain the water away; then put half a spoonful of flour, mix well together, and moisten with cream or milk, but cream is preferable; next let this sauce boil down on a sharp fire, put some salt and pepper to it, and make it rather thick. Drain the rabbits, and cover them with this sauce.
A plain English boiled rabbit with a thick onion sauce, written for cooks who bought their rabbits whole and skinned them at home. Most of the work is in the sauce, and the one thing to fix is the word "boil".
- Never let it boil hardA rolling boil for the better part of an hour will leave rabbit stringy and dry. Bring the water to the boil, then drop it to a bare simmer with the surface barely shivering, and keep it there.
- Rabbit todayFarmed rabbit sold whole runs about 2.5-3 lb and is tender; a young one is done in 35-45 minutes at a simmer, tested at the thickest part of the hind leg. Wild rabbit is leaner and older and can need considerably longer, and is better braised than simmered in plain water.
- Soaking to whitenThe soak in warm water draws out blood so the flesh cooks pale rather than grey-pink, purely a matter of appearance in an era that prized white meat on white sauce. Cold water for an hour, changed once, does the job with less risk of the meat sitting at room temperature.
- Skewering "as for boiling"This means trussing the legs tight against the body so the carcass holds a compact shape and cooks evenly. Kitchen string round the hind legs and forelegs achieves the same thing.
- A dozen white onionsThe original gives no size, and the instruction to cut each into six pieces suggests onions larger than pickling size. A dozen is a substantial quantity of onion; two or three medium yellow onions will substitute.
- "Half a spoonful of flour"Genuinely vague in the original. For 1.5 lb of chopped cooked onion and 2 oz butter, about a tablespoon of flour gives a sauce that coats; the instruction to "make it rather thick" is the real guide.
- Squeezing and frying the onionsThis is the hinge. Boiled onions hold a great deal of water, and if it is not wrung out in the towel and then driven off in the butter, the cream will thin and the sauce will taste washed out rather than sweet.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper only, as written, gives a very plain sauce. A grating of nutmeg or a blade of mace infused in the cream is a common addition in white sauces of the period and lifts it considerably.
- YieldOne rabbit serves two to three; the quantity of sauce here suits two rabbits and a table of four to six. Serve with plain boiled or steamed potatoes, which is what the sauce is really for.
Boiled meat under a thick onion sauce is one of the fixed points of nineteenth-century English cookery, and the same sauce was ladled over boiled mutton, boiled fowl and tripe with equal confidence. Rabbit belonged to that repertoire because it was cheap, plentiful and widely available in Victorian towns, sold by poulterers alongside game and treated as an everyday joint rather than a delicacy. The insistence on drawing out the blood until the flesh is "very white" reflects a period aesthetic in which pallor signalled refinement, and the sauce is built on the same logic - onions boiled, wrung dry and enriched with cream so that nothing coloured or brown enters the dish. The preference for cream over milk, noted twice, marks it as a recipe written for a kitchen with some means, though it works with milk for one without.