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Rabbit Pie, Superior
Cut a young rabbit into neat joints, and lay these in lukewarm water for half an hour, then drain and dry them. Make a quarter of a pound of veal forcemeat into small balls the size of a nutmeg, and lay them aside till wanted. If liked the livers of the rabbits may be boiled, minced, and mixed with the forcemeat. Boil three eggs hard, and cut them into quarters lenghtwise. Cut half a pound of streaky bacon into strips, and three-quarters of a pound of lean veal into neat pieces an inch square. Make a savoury powder with the eighth part of a nutmeg grated, the thin rind of half a lemon grated or minced very finely, a pinch of cayenne, a tea-spoonful of salt, and a tea-spoonful of pepper. Line the edges of a pie-dish with good puff-paste. Put the veal into the pie, then the rabbit, and lastly the bacon, intersperse the contents of the pie with the forcemeat balls and the hard-boiled eggs, and season each layer, as it is placed in the dish, with the savoury powder. Moisten the whole with stock or water, but do not entirely cover the meat. Wet the edges of the pastry, lay on the cover, trim and ornament it neatly, brush over with egg, and with a knife make a slit in the centre through which the steam can escape. Bake in a moderate oven, and cover the pie with buttered paper whilst it is baking, for fear the crust should be burnt. Serve either hot or cold. Two or three sliced truffles or half a dozen mushrooms may be added to the pie if liked, and a glassful of port may be mixed with some good gravy, and poured into the pie through the hole in the top, after it is taken out of the oven. If preferred the forcemeat balls instead of being made of veal forcemeat may be made of the livers of the rabbits, parboiled, minced, and beaten in a mortar with six or eight oysters, a spoonful of bread-crumbs, a seasoning of salt, cayenne, and powdered mace, a pinch of savoury herbs, and the raw yolk of an egg. Time to bake, fully two hours. Probable cost, 4s. 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A raised-flavour game pie of the late Victorian kind: raw meat, forcemeat and hard-boiled egg layered dry, barely moistened, and baked long and slow under a puff-paste lid. A few of its assumptions no longer hold in a modern kitchen.
- The hinge: do not drown the fillingThe instruction to moisten but "not entirely cover the meat" is the whole technique. The veal, bacon and rabbit release their own juices over two hours, and a pie filled with liquid at the start will boil, lift the lid and turn the underside of the pastry to paste.
- "A moderate oven"Read this as roughly 350F/180C, the conventional modern equivalent. The recipe itself gives no temperature and asks only that the crust be shielded so it does not burn over the full two hours.
- The buttered paperThis is the period's answer to a crust that colours long before the filling is cooked. Foil laid loosely over the top after the pastry has taken colour does the same job; the butter presumably kept the paper from sticking to the egg glaze.
- The rabbitA young farmed rabbit of about 2.5-3 lb is what suits the timing. Wild rabbit is leaner and considerably tougher, and at two hours in a dry pie it will come out stringy. The half-hour soak in lukewarm water was most likely meant to draw blood out of a freshly killed animal, and can be skipped with anything bought jointed and chilled.
- Veal forcemeatA standard nineteenth-century preparation: minced veal, suet, breadcrumbs, lemon rind, herbs and egg, worked smooth. Pork sausagemeat lightened with breadcrumbs and lemon zest is the usual modern stand-in. "The size of a nutmeg" means balls roughly an inch across.
- The savoury powderA teaspoon each of salt and pepper for the whole pie -- rabbit, veal, bacon and forcemeat together, comfortably over three pounds -- is on the assertive side by current taste, and a full teaspoon of pepper in particular will dominate. Mix the powder as directed, then season the layers by eye rather than using all of it.
- Lining the edges onlyThe paste goes round the rim of the dish, not across the base. The filling sits directly in the dish and the lid seals onto that rim strip, which is why the pie can be served cold from the dish without a soggy bottom crust.
- The port gravyWarm the port with the stock before pouring it in through the vent, and do it while the pie is still hot so the liquid draws down into the filling. Cold wine poured into a hot pie sets the fat.
- Yield and servingSix to eight as written, and it genuinely serves that many. Cold, it wants a day in the refrigerator so the jelly sets around the meat. The "probable cost, 4s. 6d." is the book's own guide for a household comparing dishes, not a modern figure.
Rabbit was the cheap meat of Victorian Britain, warrened on estates, snared by poachers and sold by the couple in every market town, and Cassell's dictionary carries a long run of rabbit recipes because it was a staple rather than a treat. What lifts this version to "superior" is everything added to the rabbit: veal, streaky bacon, forcemeat, hard eggs, and the optional truffles, oysters and port. That layering of a plain meat with richer ones is the standing logic of the raised and dish pies that ran from the eighteenth-century "savoury pye" through to the Melton Mowbray and game pies of the nineteenth, where hard-boiled egg is often said to have served both to stretch the filling and to give a handsome cut face when the pie was served cold. The oysters in the alternative forcemeat are a good period marker: cheap enough to be treated as a seasoning rather than a luxury in their own right.