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Rabbit, Boiled
This is the usual and one of the most acceptable ways of dressing rabbits. Choose moderately young rabbits, skin, draw, and wash them. Truss them with the heads skewered to the sides, drop them into boiling water, and let them simmer gently until done enough. Drain them, and serve either with onion, liver, white, or mushroom sauce, or parsley and butter. The first of these is generally preferred. Send boiled bacon to table with the boiled rabbits, or garnish the dish with rashers of broiled bacon. The flesh of a boiled rabbit will be rendered more juicy and tender if it is soaked in milk and water for a couple of hours before being boiled. Its flavour, too, will be improved if an onion, a carrot, a bunch of sweet herbs, a blade of mace, half a dozen peppercorns, and a little salt are put into the water with it. Time to simmer the rabbits, thirty to forty-five minutes, according to age and size. A very young rabbit will be done enough in twenty-five minutes. Probable cost, 7d. to 9d. per pound. Sufficient, two rabbits for five or six persons.
A plain poach in aromatic water, and the method still works — provided the rabbit never actually boils. The instruction that matters is "simmer gently": rabbit is very lean, and a rolling boil shreds the loin into dry strings before the legs are cooked.
- Simmer, not boilBring the water to the boil, add the rabbit, then drop the heat until the surface barely trembles, around 180-190F. Hard boiling toughens the saddle long before the hind legs give way.
- Farmed or wildThe 30-45 minutes given here suits a farmed rabbit of 2-3 lb, which is what most butchers and online game suppliers sell. A wild rabbit is leaner, older and stringier; it will take longer and is generally better braised or jointed than poached whole.
- Trussing and headsRabbits now arrive skinned, drawn and almost always headless, so skewering the head to the side is moot. Tie the forelegs and hind legs close to the body with string so the carcass holds its shape in the pot and cooks evenly.
- The cooking liquidTreat the optional onion, carrot, herb bunch, mace, peppercorns and salt as compulsory. Plain water gives flat, faintly woolly meat; this is a light court-bouillon and it seasons the flesh from the outside in. Save the strained liquid — it is the base for the white or onion sauce.
- The milk soakTwo hours in milk and water (the recipe gives no proportions) tempers any strong gaminess and does help with moisture. Do it in the refrigerator, not on the counter, and discard the soaking liquid.
- Judging donenessThe hind leg should move loosely in its socket and the juices at the thigh run clear; 160-165F at the thickest part of the leg is a reliable check. The saddle cooks faster than the legs, so test the leg and accept that the loin is the part at risk.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy aril around the nutmeg seed, sold as whole blades or ground. A blade is usually reckoned at something like a quarter to half a teaspoon of the ground spice — warm and floral rather than sharp.
- Onion sauceThe preferred accompaniment is the onion sauce of the sort served with boiled mutton: onions softened in butter or milk, finished into a white sauce made with some of the rabbit's cooking liquid. Broiled streaky bacon rashers round the plate supply the fat the rabbit itself does not have.
- Yield and costTwo rabbits for five or six holds up if you are serving potatoes and a sauced vegetable alongside. The price of 7d. to 9d. a pound is a Victorian figure, and rabbit was then an everyday rather than a luxury meat — the reverse of its position today.
Boiled rabbit with onion sauce and bacon was one of the workhorse dishes of the Victorian household, and Cassell's treats it as the default preparation rather than a speciality. Rabbits were bred in commercial warrens and trapped in enormous numbers across Britain in the nineteenth century, arriving in town markets by rail, which is why a general dictionary of cookery gives boiling pride of place. The pairing with onion sauce follows the older English rule that white boiled meats take a white onion sauce, the same logic that puts it beside boiled mutton and boiled fowl. The bacon is doing practical work: rabbit carries almost no fat of its own, and cooks have long compensated by larding, barding or simply serving pork alongside. Rabbit's later retreat from British tables is usually traced to the myxomatosis outbreaks of the 1950s, after which a meat that had been ordinary became unfamiliar.