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Rabbit Pie, Plain
Be careful to choose a young rabbit. Skin, empty, and wash it, and cut it into ten or twelve neat joints. If the head is to be put into the pie, split it into halves, and lay these with the other pieces in lukewarm water for half an hour. Drain and dry them, put them into a large pie-dish, the inferior joints at the bottom, and put with them three or four slices of fat bacon. Mix a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of white pepper, and half a blade of powdered mace, and sprinkle this powder over the rabbit; a little minced onion may be added, if linked. Barely cover the rabbit with cold stock or water. Lay a plate on the dish, and bake the contents in a moderate oven till they are three-parts cooked. Let the dish cool, cover it with pastry in the usual way, ornament it prettily, and make a hole in the centre, brush the crust over with egg, and bake the pie in a well-heated oven till the pastry is done enough. Serve it either hot or cold. Some cooks slice potatoes thinly, and lay them in the bottom of the dish before they put in the rabbit. Time, three-quarters of an hour to bake the pie. Probable cost, 2s. 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A two-stage pie: the rabbit is part-braised under a plate, then cooled and finished under pastry. The cooling step is the whole point and is easy to skip.
- Cool before you coverPastry laid over hot filling slumps and goes greasy underneath, and the steam pushes the lid off. Let the dish go properly cold — overnight in the fridge is best — before the crust goes on.
- Oven temperatures"A moderate oven" for the first braise is usually reckoned at around 325-350F, and a "well-heated oven" for pastry at around 425F. These are conventional modern equivalents rather than anything the book states; if the crust colours fast, drop the heat once it has set.
- The two timesThe stated three-quarters of an hour appears to cover only the covered pie, not the first stage. Bringing the rabbit to three-parts cooked under a plate will take roughly an hour or so at a moderate heat for a young animal; judge it by the meat rather than the clock.
- Which rabbitFarmed rabbit, commonly sold at around 2.5-3 lb, stands in for the "young rabbit" intended here, and jointing it into ten or twelve pieces is straightforward. Wild rabbit is leaner and tougher and wants longer in the first stage; an old wild one needs long, slow, moist cooking and is better suited to a stew than to this treatment.
- The headOptional then, and hard to come by now that rabbit is generally sold ready-dressed, though a game dealer can supply one whole. Nothing in the pie depends on it. The bony forelegs and rib pieces are presumably the "inferior joints" that go at the bottom.
- MaceHalf a blade powdered is a pinch, on the order of an eighth of a teaspoon of ground mace. Nutmeg is the nearest substitute, used sparingly, being coarser in flavour.
- Bacon and liquid"Fat bacon" means unsmoked streaky or a piece of fresh pork belly; rabbit has almost no fat of its own and needs it. Barely covering with stock is correct — a full covering boils the meat and leaves a thin, watery gravy.
- Cost and yield2s. 8d. is a period price with no useful modern equivalent. Four to five servings is accurate for a 3 lb rabbit in a deep dish.
- Vent and glazeThe hole in the centre is a working steam vent, not decoration; without it the crust lifts and cracks. Brush with beaten egg after the vent is cut, keeping the wash off the cut edges so they can still rise.
Rabbit pie belonged to the cheap end of the English meat cookery that Cassell's catalogued so exhaustively in the 1870s and after — the book gives a plain version here and richer ones elsewhere. Rabbit was the archetypal thrifty meat of Victorian Britain, widely trapped and widely sold, and the recommendation to line the dish with sliced potato is a straightforward way of stretching one animal across five plates. The technique of part-cooking the filling, cooling it, and only then covering it with pastry reflects a real constraint: a lean, bony meat needs far longer than a crust does, so the two were cooked separately. That the pie may be served hot or cold is a reminder that cold pie was ordinary supper and travelling food rather than a leftover.