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Rabbit, Jugged
Melt one ounce of butter or good dripping. Wash a rabbit, cut it into small neat joints, and slice two onions; fry both together for six or seven minutes, then put the rabbit and onions in a jar. Add a quarter of a pint of claret, a pint of stock, twelve pepper-corns, and half a tea-spoonful of salt; tie the jar down tightly, and bake for two hours. Strain off the gravy into a saucepan, mix a dessert-spoonful of flour with a table-spoonful of cold stock or water, add it to the gravy with a tea-spoonful of red currant jelly, and stir over the fire for three or four minutes until the whole thickens. Arrange the pieces of rabbit neatly on a hot dish, pour some of the gravy over them. Have ready some forcemeat balls very hot, arrange them round the edge of the dish, and serve immediately, with red-currant jelly as accompaniment, and the remainder of the gravy in a sauce-boat. Probable cost, 2s. to 2s. 6d.
A straightforward braise dressed up as something older: the "jug" is simply a lidded stoneware jar standing in the oven, and a heavy casserole with a tight lid does the same work. The points below cover the imperial measures, the vessel, and the two things the recipe assumes you already know how to do.
- The jarA tall glazed stoneware jar, tied down with paper or cloth so no steam escapes, and often stood in a pan of water. A cast-iron casserole with a well-fitting lid gives the same slow, sealed, moist heat; a sheet of foil under the lid seals it further.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as is usual in books of this date. Two hours suits a moderate to slow oven; roughly 325F is a reasonable modern equivalent. Higher and the liquid boils rather than trembles, which toughens the meat.
- Imperial liquid measuresA quarter pint of claret is 5 fl oz, a scant two-thirds of a US cup. A pint of stock is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz, or just under 2 1/2 US cups. Claret here means any dry red Bordeaux-style wine.
- Spoon sizesA dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons, so the flour is a modest thickening for a pint of gravy. Spoon measures in British books of this date were not standardised; treat the tablespoon as roughly equivalent to a modern one.
- Rabbit, wild or farmedFarmed rabbit at 2 1/2 to 3 lb is tender and may be done in 90 minutes; an older wild rabbit will want the full two hours or longer. Joint it into two forelegs, two hind legs, and the saddle cut across into two or three pieces.
- Forcemeat ballsAssumed knowledge, not supplied. A typical version of the period is breadcrumbs, shredded suet, chopped bacon or the rabbit's liver, parsley, lemon zest and a beaten egg, rolled small and either fried or baked until firm. Cook them separately so they do not disintegrate in the braise.
- The gravyStrain, then slake the flour in cold liquid before it meets the hot gravy or it will lump. Three or four minutes of simmering is the minimum needed to cook out the raw flour taste; the currant jelly goes in to sweeten and gloss, not to sauce it.
- Yield and costOne rabbit serves four. "2s. to 2s. 6d." is the estimated price of the dish in shillings and pence, a figure Cassell's gives throughout for household budgeting.
Jugging is a long-established English braising method, the name generally traced to the tall earthenware jug or jar that was sealed and set in a pan of simmering water or in the falling heat of a bread oven. It is most associated with hare, whose blood was traditionally stirred into the sauce at the end; the rabbit version is the thriftier domestic cousin, and Cassell's treats it as everyday food rather than game-season cooking. Rabbit was cheap and abundant in late Victorian Britain, sold by poulterers and hawked in the streets, and a dictionary of cookery aimed at middle-class households priced the finished dish at half a crown. The red currant jelly and forcemeat balls are the standard furniture of the English game table, borrowed here to give a modest animal the manners of a grander one.