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Rabbit, Curried
Take two fresh young rabbits and half a pound of streaky bacon. Cut the bacon into small squares, and divide the rabbit into pieces convenient for serving. Fry the bacon in two ounces of butter. As the pieces of bacon brown take them out and lay them on a separate dish; put in the pieces of rabbit, brown them also, and lift them out; then fry in the fat three or four sliced onions and two sour apples finely minced. When these are soft, rub them patiently through a sieve, and mix the pulp very smoothly with a dessert-spoonful of curry paste, a dessert-spoonful of curry powder, half a tea-spoonful of flour, and a pint of stock, or, failing this, a pint of water and half a tea-spoonful of Bovril. Put the gravy into a stewpan with the rabbit and bacon, and let all simmer very gently together until the rabbit is sufficiently cooked, which it will be when the flesh leaves the bone easily. Pile the rabbit on a dish, pour the gravy over, and serve with rice, boiled as for curry, on a separate dish. The flavour of this dish, which is a common one and a general favourite, may be varied in many ways. A little celery or a few mushrooms may be simmered with the gravy, or a clove of garlic may be added when the flavouring is liked, or a little fresh cocoa-nut may be rasped and stewed with it, or a cupful of milk or cream may be added to the sauce. If the apples are not at hand the juice of a lemon may be substituted for them. Time to stew the rabbit in the curry sauce, two hours. Probable cost, 2s. 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A late-Victorian braised curry that behaves much like a modern one, with two adjustments worth making: the stewing time and the way the onion-and-apple base is smoothed out.
- Two hours is for wild rabbitFarmed rabbit, which is what most butchers sell, is tender in 45 to 60 minutes of gentle simmering and turns dry and stringy if held for two hours. Cook until the meat pulls from the bone, as the recipe says, and start checking at 40 minutes. Wild rabbit, especially an older one, genuinely can need the full two hours.
- Two rabbits, roughlyA dressed farmed rabbit runs 2.5 to 3 lb, so two gives 5 to 6 lb, which matches the stated four or five servings. One larger rabbit plus an extra half pound of thigh meat works if you can only get one.
- Rub through a sieve, or use a blenderVictorian kitchens had no blender, so a smooth base was got by sieving. A stick blender or food processor does it in seconds; keep the onions and apple soft and barely coloured first, since browned onion pulp can make the gravy bitter.
- Curry paste and curry powderBoth were commercial products by the late nineteenth century and are still sold. A mild Madras-style powder plus a spoonful of any decent curry paste is in the right register; the dish is meant to be gently spiced and slightly sweet-sour, not hot.
- Bovril and stockBovril is still made and is a concentrated beef extract; half a teaspoon in a pint of water is a thin, salty stock. Unsalted chicken or veal stock gives a better result and lets you salt at the end.
- Sour applesA cooking apple that collapses, Bramley in Britain or Granny Smith elsewhere. Eating apples stay in pieces and add sugar without the acidity that balances the curry powder.
- Streaky baconThis is American-style belly bacon. Buy it in a slab if you can so you can cut proper squares rather than lardons from thin slices, and reduce the 2 oz butter if the bacon renders a lot of fat.
- The optional additionsCoconut and cream are worth taking up; add either in the last 15 minutes so the sauce does not split or the coconut go stale-tasting. The lemon substitute for apple works, but add it off the heat at the end rather than stewing it in.
- Probable cost2s 8d is the original price given for the whole dish. It has no modern equivalent worth quoting.
Curried rabbit sits at the meeting point of two very British habits: rabbit as one of the cheapest meats available, and curry as a way to use up or dress up whatever meat was to hand. Ready-made curry powder and curry paste had been sold in Britain since the late eighteenth century, and cookery writers treated them as pantry staples rather than exotica, which is why Cassell's calls this "a common one and a general favourite" without further comment. The onion-and-apple purée thickening is characteristic of the English adaptation of curry rather than of any Indian original, as is the practice of serving the rice separately in its own dish. The mention of Bovril places the entry after the mid-1880s, when the beef extract was launched under that name; it was widely advertised as a stand-in for stock.