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Rabbit, Fricasseed, Brown
Skin, empty, and clean a rabbit, preserving the liver and heart. Wash it, and afterwards dry it well in a soft cloth, and cut it into neat joints convenient for serving. If it is intended to make use of the head, split it open, and take out the eyes. Dissolve a slice of butter and a slice of lard in a saucepan, and fry the pieces of rabbit in the fat. When they are nicely browned, take them out, and lay them aside. Mince three onions finely, fry them until brown, and put them with the rabbit. Stir a dessert-spoonful of flour into the fat, and beat it with the back of a wooden spoon until it is quite smooth, and of a bright brown colour. Moisten gradually with as much stock or water as is required to make the gravy of the consistency of thick cream, and add to it a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, two bay-leaves, a little salt and pepper, and a clove of garlic, if this is liked. Put in the pieces of rabbit, and let all simmer gently together until the rabbit is sufficiently cooked. Just before the fricassee is served, put into it a glassful of claret or port. Time, one hour. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A brown fricassee is simply a rabbit stew built on a browned roux — closer to a civet than to the pale, creamy fricassee the word usually suggests today. The instructions are sound; only the units, the animal and the timing need translating.
- Wild or farmed rabbitA farmed rabbit of about 3 lb is tender and will be done in the hour given. A wild rabbit is leaner and much tougher, and wants 1½ to 2 hours of very gentle simmering before the leg meat gives way.
- JointsCut into two forelegs, two hind legs, and the saddle across into two or three pieces. The ribcage is mostly bone; it earns its place in the pot for flavour rather than eating. The head is optional by the original's own admission and few cooks will want it.
- Liver and heartThe recipe tells you to keep them but never says what to do with them. One common handling is to fry them with the joints and either return them to the pan or mash the liver into the sauce at the end as a thickener and enricher.
- A slice of butter and a slice of lardA "slice" here is a cut off a block, roughly 1 oz each — about 2 oz of fat in total, which is ample for browning; butter alone is more likely to scorch at the heat needed, which may be why the lard is there.
- Dessert-spoonfulBetween a teaspoon and a tablespoon — about 2 teaspoons. For four or five servings that is a light thickening, which is correct: the sauce should coat, not cling.
- The roux is the hinge"A bright brown colour" means cooking the flour in the fat until it smells nutty and turns the shade of a hazelnut shell, several minutes of constant stirring. Stop short and the stew tastes of raw flour; take it to dark brown and it loses thickening power and turns bitter.
- LiquidAdd the stock a ladle at a time, working each addition smooth before the next, or the roux will lump. "Thick cream" consistency at this stage is right — it will reduce and tighten over the hour.
- The wine at the endA glassful is usually taken as a wineglassful, about 2 fl oz. Added at the finish it stays sharp and fruity; if that rawness bothers you, let it bubble two or three minutes before serving. Port will make the sauce noticeably sweeter than claret.
- AromaticsTie the parsley, thyme and bay together so they can be lifted out. Serves four to five, and wants boiled potatoes, mash or bread to take up the sauce.
"Fricassee" normally means meat cooked in a white sauce, and Victorian cookery books often paired rabbit with a pale, oniony sauce; the deliberate label brown here signals the other branch of the technique, in which the meat is browned first and the sauce built on a roux. The result is essentially the French country treatment of rabbit — hare and rabbit stews thickened with browned flour, bound with the liver and finished with red wine, of which civet is the best-known form. Cassell's gives a probable cost of three shillings: rabbit was abundant and inexpensive in late nineteenth-century Britain, sold in numbers by poulterers and street hawkers, and it fell out of favour in the twentieth century partly through wartime overexposure and partly through the myxomatosis outbreaks of the 1950s. The instruction to split the head and remove the eyes, offered without comment, is a reminder of how completely a household of that period expected to use an animal it had bought whole.