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Rabbit, Fricasseed, White
Skin, empty, and wash a nice young rabbit, and afterwards dry it well in a soft cloth. Drain it, and cut it into neat joints convenient for serving. Put these into a stewpan, pour over them as much white stock or water as will barely cover them, and add two onions, a bunch of sweet herbs, half a blade of mace, the peel of half a lemon, and a little salt. Simmer all gently together for three-quarters of an hour, lift out the pieces of rabbit, and put them aside. Mix a dessert-spoonful of flour very smoothly with a tea-cupful of milk or cream, add a tea-cupful of the gravy, and put the liquor into a clean saucepan with a slice of butter rolled in flour. Stir it until it boils, then let it simmer gently until it is so thick that it will coat the spoon. Put the pieces of rabbit into this sauce, and let them get quite hot. Add pepper and salt if required, and at the last moment stir the juice of a lemon into the sauce. Arrange the pieces of rabbit on a hot dish, pour the sauce over, and garnish with cut lemon. This fricassee will be very much improved if a dozen or more blanched mushrooms are simmered with the gravy ten minutes before it is taken from the fire. Time, one hour. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A white fricassee is a two-stage dish: the rabbit is poached in an aromatic broth, then reheated in a sauce built from that broth. The points below cover the archaic measures and the two places where the method needs a modern hand.
- The hinge: add the lemon off the heatA dessertspoon of flour in a cup of milk or cream is a thin liaison, and a full lemon's juice stirred into it over heat can curdle it. Safest to take the pan off the burner, stir the juice in at the last moment as directed, and serve straight away.
- Dessert-spoonful and tea-cupfulA dessertspoon is about 2 teaspoons (10 ml); a Victorian teacup is roughly 150 ml, or two-thirds of a US cup. So the sauce is about 300 ml of liquid thickened with 10 ml of flour plus the butter-and-flour paste, which is a light coating sauce rather than a heavy one.
- Butter rolled in flourA lump of butter coated or worked with flour, the same thickening principle as beurre manié. The recipe gives no quantity, so judge it by eye. Add it a little at a time and let the sauce boil briefly so the flour cooks out, or the finished sauce tastes pasty.
- Choosing the rabbit"A nice young rabbit" means a young animal, wild or tame; farmed rabbit sold ready-dressed today runs about 1.2-1.4 kg (2.5-3 lb). Wild rabbit is leaner, stronger in flavour and often older; it wants longer, gentler cooking and suits a delicate white sauce less well.
- Cut and timingJoint it into two front legs, two hind legs, and the saddle cut across into two or three pieces. Three-quarters of an hour suits the legs, but the saddle is lean and will dry out; add it about 20 minutes in and lift it as soon as it is firm and opaque.
- Mace and sweet herbsHalf a blade of mace is a fragment of the lacy covering of nutmeg, still sold whole in some spice shops; a small pinch of ground mace, or a very light grate of nutmeg, stands in. "Sweet herbs" here means a tied bundle of parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf.
- The mushroomsBlanching means a brief scald to set their colour, the point being to keep the sauce white. Small button mushrooms are right; chestnut or field mushrooms will grey the sauce, though they taste better.
- Yield and costFour to five as the book says, if there is a substantial garnish of rice or potato alongside; three is more realistic as a main course by modern portions. The 3s. is a late-Victorian retail figure and has no useful modern equivalent.
A fricassee is meat cut into joints, cooked in liquid, and served in a sauce made from that liquid; French usage generally treats the fricassee as a white dish, the meat not browned, though browned versions are also described, and the title of this entry implies a brown counterpart for rabbit elsewhere in the book. Rabbit was among the cheaper meats in Britain when this dictionary was compiled in the later nineteenth century, and was sold in quantity in city markets. The white treatment, with cream, mace and lemon peel, is the polite end of that range: it borrows the sauce of a chicken fricassee, a dish of the same shape but dearer meat, and the lemon at the end cuts the richness.