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Rabbit, Pilau Of
Skin, wash, and empty a fat young rabbit, and cut it up into ten or twelve pieces. Rub each one of these with a savoury mixture made by mixing the juice of two large onions with a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of powdered ginger, and the juice of a lemon. The onion juice may be obtained by bruising the onions, and draining off the liquor. Boil a pound of rice in a quart of stock broth till it is half cooked. Whilst it is simmering melt four ounces of good fat or butter in a saucepan, and in this fry the pieces of rabbit till they are lightly browned, and also two sliced onions. Put the meat into a deep earthen jar. Lay the onions upon it, and cover with the rice. Add four cloves, eight peppercorns, a pinch of salt, and one or two inches of thin lemon rind, and pour half a pint of milk over the whole. Tie three or four folds of paper over the top of the jar, and bake in a moderate oven. If required, add a little broth or a little more milk when the rabbit is half done. When the meat is sufficiently cooked, pile the rice on a dish, place the pieces of rabbit upon it, and serve very hot. Time to bake, from an hour and a half to two hours. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian Anglo-Indian pilau built on rabbit rather than mutton or fowl. The method is sound; most of what needs translating is the equipment and the rice.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 325-350F (165-175C). The dish is a slow braise in a covered vessel, so the lower end suits it better, particularly with farmed rabbit.
- The earthen jarAny deep, heavy, lidded casserole or Dutch oven of about 4 quarts. The three or four folds of paper tied over the top were a seal; a tight lid, or foil crimped under the lid, does the same job of trapping steam.
- The rabbitA "fat young rabbit" means roughly 2.5-3 lb dressed. Farmed rabbit is what most butchers sell and it is tender but lean, so check at 75 minutes rather than waiting the full two hours. Wild rabbit is tougher and darker and will want the longer time.
- Onion juiceGrating two onions on the coarse side of a box grater and squeezing the pulp in a cloth is faster than bruising and draining, and gives the same result: about 3-4 tablespoons of sharp liquid to rub into the meat with the salt, ginger and lemon.
- Half-cooking the riceA pound of long-grain rice is about 2.5 cups. Boil it in the quart of stock for 5-6 minutes only, then drain, keeping the broth. Rice taken past halfway here turns to paste in the oven.
- LiquidThe half-pint of milk plus the reserved broth is what finishes the rice. Check at the hour mark and add broth a few tablespoons at a time if the surface looks dry, as the recipe directs.
- Whole spicesFour cloves, eight peppercorns and a strip of lemon rind go in loose and stay loose. Tie them in muslin if you would rather not find a clove between someone's teeth.
- Yield and costFive or six as written. The "3s." is a late-Victorian price and has no useful modern equivalent.
Pilau, pilaff, pulao, pilav: the words go back to Persian pilaw/polow, though English use of "pilaw" is recorded well before the Anglo-Indian period, and the dish reached Victorian kitchens largely through India, along with the officers and civil servants who had eaten it there. Victorian cookery books carry many versions, a good number of them following the same shape as this one, with meat browned in fat, part-boiled rice piled over it, whole spices, and a long slow bake in a sealed pot. What marks it as English rather than Indian is the half-pint of milk, the lemon rind and the near-absence of chilli. Rabbit appears in place of the usual mutton or fowl for a plain economic reason: rabbit was among the cheaper meats of the nineteenth-century British table, commonly sold by the couple or brace, and books of this kind were expected to show what could be done with it beyond a pie or a stew.