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Rabbit, Croquettes Of
Pick the meat from the remains of roast rabbit, and free it from skin and sinew. Mince finely, adding to it a third of its weight in lean ham, and season with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Put the mixture into a stewpan with a slice of fresh butter and one or two table-spoonfuls of thick cream or white sauce, and stir over a gentle fire for five or six minutes. Taste if it be nicely seasoned, and spread it on a dish to cool. If liked, one or two mushrooms or truffles can be added to the forcemeat. Divide the preparation into portions of an equal size, mould these into the shape of corks or balls, brush over with oil, roll them in egg and bread-crumbs, and fry in hot fat till they are crisp and lightly browned. Drain them, sprinkle a little salt over them, pile them on a napkin, and garnish with parsley. If liked, tomato or piquant sauce can be sent to table in a tureen. Time to fry, five to seven minutes.
A leftovers dish from the end of the Victorian rabbit's life cycle: roast one day, croquettes the next. The success of it hinges entirely on how firm the mixture is before it goes near the fat.
- Chill it properly"Spread it on a dish to cool" means spread thin and refrigerate until cold and stiff, at least an hour. A warm or slack mixture will burst its crumb coating in the fat and the croquettes will unravel.
- The bindingOne or two tablespoons of cream is very little for a bound forcemeat; a thick white sauce (a roux-based bechamel, cooked until it comes away from the pan) is the safer reading and gives something that will actually hold a cork shape. Aim for a paste barely wetter than cold mashed potato.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. Meat from one roast rabbit is roughly 12 oz to 1 lb picked, plus 4-5 oz lean ham, making about a dozen croquettes for four people as a first course.
- Egg and crumbsBrushing with oil first is unusual and unnecessary if you flour lightly instead; the sequence flour, beaten egg, fine dry crumbs is what keeps the coating sealed. A second pass through egg and crumbs is worth it for anything shaped like a cork.
- FryingThe recipe says only "hot fat" and gives no depth or temperature; if deep-frying, the usual modern range is 350-375F. Five to seven minutes is generous for something already cooked through -- pull them at three to four minutes, when the crust is set and light brown, or the filling will boil and split the shell.
- HamUse a dry-cured cooked ham rather than wet-brined sandwich ham, which will water the mixture down. Season with salt at the end, after tasting: the ham may carry enough already.
- RabbitFarmed rabbit is what supermarkets and butchers sell now and it is milder and more tender than the wild animal this book is likely to have assumed. Wild rabbit is leaner and gives a stronger, drier mince, and benefits from the extra butter.
- ServingThe napkin is a Victorian presentation for drained fried food; a folded cloth or paper on a warm dish does the same job of absorbing fat. Tomato sauce or a sharp piquante sauce alongside is a real improvement, not an afterthought.
Croquettes belong to the great nineteenth-century economy of remains: a household that roasted a rabbit on Sunday was expected to account for every scrap of it, and the cookery dictionaries of the period are full of second-day dishes built on minced cooked meat, a binding sauce, and a fried crumb crust. The word comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the technique reached English kitchens through the professional French cooking that Cassell's and its rivals were busy translating for middle-class use. Rabbit was cheap, plentiful and unromantic in Britain then -- wild rabbit in particular was everyday meat rather than game-shop luxury -- so pairing it with ham, nutmeg and an optional truffle was a way of dressing a humble carcass in French clothes. The instruction to mould the mixture "into the shape of corks or balls" is a period marker in itself: period books offer cork, ball, pear and cutlet shapes as alternatives, and the line between a croquette and a rissole was looser in English usage than the names suggest.