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Rabbit Cutlets
Boil a rabbit for half an hour; take all the meat off the bones and mince it very finely with an ounce of bread-crumbs, a little chopped onion, an ounce of minced bacon or ham, and pepper and salt to taste. Make the mixture into the form of cutlets, egg and bread-crumb them, and fry in hot fat until brown. Lay them in a hot dish on a bed of parsley, and send brown gravy to table with them in a tureen. Probable cost, 2s. to 2s. 6d.
A Victorian way of stretching a boiled rabbit into a second, smarter dish. The method is sound, but the binding and the seasoning both need attention if the cutlets are to hold together and taste of anything.
- The hinge: bind the mixtureAs written, minced rabbit, an ounce of crumbs and a little bacon will not cohere in the pan. Work in a beaten egg yolk, or a stiff panade of crumbs soaked in a few spoonfuls of the cooking liquor, and chill the shaped cutlets for half an hour before crumbing so they firm up.
- Rabbit size and cooking timeA dressed rabbit runs roughly 2 to 3 lb, wild ones often smaller. Half an hour's boiling will generally see a young farmed rabbit cooked through; a wild or older animal is better given 50 to 60 minutes at a bare simmer, or the meat shreds coarse and dry. Keep the liquor for the gravy.
- WeightsAn ounce of breadcrumbs is roughly half a cup of fresh crumbs, or a scant quarter cup of dried. An ounce of bacon is one thick rasher, finely chopped rather than ground.
- "Cutlets" means the shapeNo bone is involved. The mixture is patted into small flat ovals or the classic chop shape, sometimes with a length of macaroni or a trimmed bone pushed in as a mock handle before crumbing.
- Egg and breadcrumbThe recipe calls for beaten egg and crumbs only; a preliminary dusting of flour is an optional modern addition rather than part of this text. Press the crumbs on firmly and let the coated cutlets rest ten minutes so the crust sets and does not slide off in the fat.
- FryingShallow-fry in fat at about 350-360F, three to four minutes a side. The filling is already cooked, so the aim is colour and a crisp shell, not further cooking; hotter fat browns the crumbs before the centre warms through.
- SeasoningBoiled rabbit is exceptionally bland. Be generous with salt and pepper, and a little grated lemon zest, mace or chopped parsley in the mixture repays itself. The bacon is doing most of the flavouring work here.
- Gravy and yieldReduce the rabbit cooking liquor and thicken it with a brown roux rather than opening a jar. Makes eight to ten cutlets, enough for four.
- On the priceThe 2s. to 2s. 6d. is late-Victorian British currency and has no useful modern equivalent; it is there so a housekeeper could check the cook's accounts.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the British rabbit, when the animal was cheap, plentiful and widely eaten — warrened, snared, farmed and sold by the brace in every market town. Dishes like this one sit in the large Victorian genre of made-over meats: cookery books of the period devote whole chapters to rendering yesterday's boiled or roast joint into something that could be sent to table looking new, since throwing food away was a moral failing as much as an economic one. The cutlet shape follows French kitchen practice, where côtelettes of minced meat, egged and crumbed, were a standard entrée; giving a shapeless mince a recognisable silhouette, sometimes with a false bone stuck in one end, was the whole point. Rabbit's decline in British cooking is usually traced to the myxomatosis outbreaks of the 1950s, after which a meat that had been ordinary became, for most households, unfamiliar.