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RABBIT PATE (a la Provencale)
Take two rabbits, cut them into joints without boning them, and lay them in a saucepan with two carrots, two onions, a clove of garlic, a bunch of herbs, and about a pound of the belly of pickled pork. Boil in as little water as possible for half an hour, then take the meat out, drain it, place the pork at the bottom of a well-buttered pie-dish, and upon it lay the pieces of rabbit. Pour a glassful of white wine over the whole, and strew over it some Spanish pimento; have some batter ready, pour it into the dish, and bake the pate in a quick oven for half an hour. Reduce the liquid in which the meat was cooked, and add the juice of a lemon; when the pate is done, place it in another dish, and serve with the sauce poured round it.
A rustic braise finished under a baked batter, closer to a toad-in-the-hole than to a pastry pie. Two things decide whether it works: the salt level of the pork and the age of the rabbits.
- Quick ovenRead this as 425–450F. The batter needs the initial blast to rise and set over the wet filling; a moderate oven leaves it sodden underneath.
- The batter is not specifiedCassell's assumes the reader knows a plain pouring batter of the Yorkshire pudding type — flour, eggs, milk, salt, slack enough to pour. No quantity is given, so judge by the dish: enough to come level with the top of the meat and no more, or it will not cook through in half an hour.
- Belly of pickled porkUnsmoked salt pork or green (unsmoked) streaky bacon. Nineteenth-century pickled pork was often much saltier than what is sold now, and modern salt pork still needs rinsing and no additional salt anywhere in the dish; the reduced cooking liquor concentrates whatever is there.
- Spanish pimentoMost likely pimenton, Spanish paprika, sweet or lightly smoked, rather than chilli or the pickled pimiento pepper of a jar; note that "pimento" alone in Victorian texts frequently means allspice, so the reading rests on the word "Spanish". The recipe gives no quantity, only "strew over".
- A glassful of wineVictorian recipes mean a wine glass rather than a tumbler; a wineglassful was conventionally about 2 fl oz of dry white, though "a glassful" is looser than the formal measure.
- Rabbit and the half-hour boilFarmed rabbit of about 2 1/2 to 3 lb takes the half-hour braise well and finishes tender in the oven. A wild rabbit, especially an older one, will still be tough at that point; give it 50–60 minutes in the pot before it goes into the dish.
- Cook it in a pot, not a casserole dishThe initial cooking happens in a saucepan with barely any water — effectively a braise in its own juices. The vegetables and herb bunch are aromatics for the liquor and are discarded, not layered into the pie-dish.
- The sauceReduce the strained liquor until it coats a spoon, then add the lemon juice. The recipe does not specify at what point off the heat.
- Turning out and servingThe recipe says only to place the finished pate in another dish; if you invert it out of the buttered pie-dish, let it stand five minutes first, as loosening a baked batter is the trickiest moment. Two rabbits will serve six to eight.
The word pâté here carries its older, looser sense of a pie or covered dish of meat rather than the smooth potted paste the term now suggests in English — the batter takes the place of a crust, in a kitchen where good pastry meant expense and skill. The à la Provençale tag is doing honest work: garlic, white wine, lemon and Spanish paprika point south, and rabbit with salt pork and garlic remains a staple of the Mediterranean French kitchen. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for late-Victorian British households, drew heavily on French practice and rendered it in terms an English cook with a coal range could follow, which is why a Provençal dish arrives dressed in pickled pork and a pudding batter. Rabbit itself was cheap, plentiful and unremarkable then, sold by poulterers alongside fowl; its retreat to specialist butchers is a twentieth-century development, not a reflection on the meat.