Home › The Principles of Cookery › Rabbit, Piquant
Rabbit, Piquant
Skin, draw, and thoroughly cleanse a fresh young rabbit. Cut it open down all its length, lay it flat upon a table, and skewer it well to keep it in shape. Sprinkle a little pepper and salt over it, and lay it in an oval pan just large enough to hold it, with five or six ounces of bacon fat, dripping, or butter. Fry it till it is three-parts done. Take it up, drain it, and let it cool, brush over with oiled butter, and egg and bread-crumb it twice. A little time before it is wanted, put it into a brisk oven, and bake until it is lightly browned. Serve on a hot dish, and send to table with a little piccalilli, or any other suitable pickle, and a sauce prepared as follows. Pound three shallots in a mortar, and with them a tea-spoonful of chopped tarragon, and a little pepper, salt, and un-mixed mustard. Two or three gherkins, and a little chopped chervil and burnet, may be added if they are at hand. Beat the raw yolk of an egg in a basin, and when it begins to thicken stir in very gradually six table-spoonfuls of salad oil. The oil must be added first in drops, afterwards in tea-spoonfuls, and the sauce must be well beaten between every addition until it is very thick. Stir in by degrees two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, one table-spoonful of chilli vinegar, and the pounded mixture, and beat it again. Keep the sauce in a cool place till wanted, and serve in a tureen. If tarragon-leaves cannot be had, a tea-spoonful of tarragon vinegar may be used. Time, ten minutes to fry a small rabbit; twenty minutes to bake it. Probable cost of rabbit, 7d to 9d. per pound. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A spatchcocked rabbit, part-fried, crumbed and finished in a hot oven, served with what is essentially a hand-beaten rémoulade. The sauce is the fussy part and the place most attempts go wrong.
- The hinge: build the mayonnaise slowlySix tablespoons of oil into one yolk is a workable ratio, but only if the first spoonful goes in literally drop by drop with hard beating between additions. Have the yolk and oil at room temperature; a cold yolk splits readily. If it breaks, start a fresh yolk in a clean basin and beat the split mixture into it a drop at a time.
- Raw egg in the sauceThe sauce is never cooked. Use pasteurised egg or a very fresh egg from a reliable source, keep it refrigerated, and make it the same day it is eaten rather than leaving it "in a cool place" in the Victorian sense of a larder.
- The rabbitA "fresh young rabbit" would be a farmed or young wild animal; the recipe gives no weight, but something in the region of 2 to 3 lb dressed suits the timings and the "sufficient for two or three persons". Butchers and online game suppliers sell them ready skinned and drawn. Older wild rabbit is generally too sinewy for this treatment and is better braised.
- Cut it open down all its lengthThis is spatchcocking: split the animal along the belly or backbone, press it flat, and run two skewers crosswise to hold the shape. Snipping the sinew at the hip and shoulder joints helps it lie flat and cook evenly.
- "Three-parts done" and "a brisk oven"Fry until about three-quarters cooked, roughly 10 minutes for a small rabbit turned once in the fat, which is the time the recipe itself gives. A "brisk" oven is generally reckoned to be a hot one, somewhere in the region of 400–425°F (200–220°C); twenty minutes there is enough to set the crumbs and finish the meat. Rabbit is lean and dries fast, so check the thickest part of the hind leg at 160°F (71°C).
- Oiled butter, and crumbing twiceOiled butter is simply melted butter, ideally clarified so the milk solids do not scorch. Egg-and-crumbing twice means egg, crumbs, egg again, crumbs again; use dry fine white crumbs and press them on firmly, then rest the rabbit in the fridge so the coating sets before baking.
- Un-mixed mustardDry mustard powder, not the made-up jarred kind. A quarter to half a teaspoon is plenty against a single yolk of sauce.
- Herbs and vinegarsSalad burnet is a cucumber-scented herb rarely sold now; omit it or add a little chopped cucumber skin. Chilli vinegar can be replaced with a teaspoon of a sharp hot sauce or a chilli steeped in wine vinegar for a day. Tarragon vinegar substitutes for fresh tarragon at the rate the recipe gives.
- Fat and yieldFive or six ounces of dripping is for shallow-frying in a close-fitting pan and is largely poured off, not eaten. As written the dish feeds two to three; scale to one rabbit per two hearty appetites.
Cassell's belongs to the era when rabbit was among the cheapest meats in a British kitchen — the "probable cost of 7d to 9d. per pound" was comparable to butcher's mutton of the period — and rabbit appears repeatedly across the dictionary in pies, curries, fricassees and stews. "Piquant" here signals the French treatment: the cold sauce of pounded shallot, tarragon, chervil, gherkin and mustard bound into a hand-made mayonnaise is a rémoulade in all but name, and the pairing of a hot crumbed bird or beast with a sharp cold sauce was a standard trick for lifting bland or dry meat. Spatchcocking and egg-and-crumbing were often said to suit lean game, the double coating forming a shell that holds in what little moisture rabbit has. The instruction to add piccalilli alongside is very much of its time, bottled Anglo-Indian pickles being a familiar feature of the Victorian table.