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Rabbit, Boudins Of
Take the white flesh of a rabbit. Free it from skin and sinew, mince finely, pound well, and make into a delicate forcemeat, by mixing with each pound of meat two ounces of butter, one ounce of fat bacon, and a dessert-spoonful of flour. Season the forcemeat with salt, pepper, and pounded mace, flavour with dressed onions or mushrooms finely minced, and bind it together with one or two yolks of eggs. Beat till it is quite smooth. Spread it on a dish, and form the forcemeat into small sausages. Put these into a stewpan, cover with boiling stock, and let them simmer gently until the forcemeat is set. Drain them, dish them in a circle, pour over them some nicely-flavoured brown sauce, and serve very hot. If liked, two or three pounded potatoes, or a small portion of panada (see PANADA), may be mixed with the forcemeat; if so the flour should be omitted. This is a convenient way of using the remains of cold cooked rabbit. Time, about a quarter of an hour to boil the boudins. Probable cost of rabbits, 7d. to 9d. per pound.
This is a quenelle in all but name: a pounded forcemeat poached in stock. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how gently the stock moves.
- Keep the stock below a simmerAt a rolling boil the boudins swell, split and shed their fat. Bring the stock to the boil to cover them, then drop the heat until the surface only shivers, around 170-180F. Fifteen minutes at that temperature sets them through; check one is firm at the centre and reads 165F.
- A dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons. Per pound of meat that is barely enough flour to matter on its own, which is why the recipe offers panada or potato as an alternative binder.
- PanadaA paste of bread or flour cooked in milk or stock, used to lighten and bind forcemeats. Cassell's cross-references its own entry; any bread panada of roughly the same weight as the butter will do the same work. Note the instruction to drop the flour if you use it.
- Pounding, without a mortarA food processor does in thirty seconds what the original expects of a mortar and a strong arm. Pulse the raw rabbit cold with the butter and bacon, then the yolks, and stop as soon as it is smooth; overworking warms the fat and the mixture breaks.
- RabbitA farmed rabbit of 2.5-3 lb yields perhaps 12 oz of usable white flesh from the saddle and hind legs, roughly three-quarters of the pound the recipe works from. Chicken or veal substitutes directly. If you are following the last line and using cold cooked rabbit, the forcemeat will be drier and needs the panada rather than the flour.
- Dressed onionsCooked, not raw. Sweat finely minced onion or mushroom in butter until soft and dry, then cool it before it goes into the mixture, or the moisture will loosen the forcemeat.
- Pounded maceGround mace, the lacy covering of the nutmeg. A generous pinch per pound; it is one of the characteristic seasonings of English forcemeat.
- Brown sauceAn espagnole or a reduced brown stock finished with butter. Reducing some of the poaching liquid and mounting it with butter is quicker and keeps the flavour of the dish together.
- YieldA pound of meat makes about a dozen boudins the size of a small sausage, enough for four as a first course.
Boudin in French primarily denotes blood pudding, and by the nineteenth century English kitchens had borrowed the word for these skinless poached forcemeats, close cousins of the quenelle. Rabbit was sold by the pound at prices Cassell's puts at sevenpence to ninepence. The closing sentence points to another use for the dish: it can be made with cold cooked meat, in the manner of the Victorian entrees designed to make such meat presentable a second time, dressed up with a French name, a ring on the dish and a good brown sauce.