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Rabbit, Quenelles Of
Cut the meat from a rabbit, free it from skin and sinew, scrape it with a knife, pound it, and rub it through a wire sieve. Soak the crumb of two French rolls in lukewarm water, and when it is quite soft squeeze it dry in a cloth. Chop three or four mushrooms till small, and put them in a clean saucepan with a slice of butter, half a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-rind, half a shallot finely minced, a pinch of powdered thyme, a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a little pepper and salt. Let these steam gently for three or four minutes, mix with them the soaked bread, and stir the mixture over the fire till it ceases to adhere to the stewpan and forms a smooth paste. Place the ingredients in a mortar in the following proportions. Six ounces of the pounded rabbit to three ounces of butter and four ounces of above panada. Pound all thoroughly for several minutes, and add a table-spoonful of white sauce, two whole eggs, and the yolk of one. Rub the mixture again through a sieve, taste in order to ascertain if it requires further seasoning, and put it on ice or in a cool place. When wanted form the quenelles according to the directions already given (see QUENELLES, MOULDING OF), throw them into boiling water, and poach them till the forcemeat is set. Serve hot with white sauce or mushroom sauce poured round them. Time to poach the quenelles, about ten minutes. Probable cost of rabbit, 7d. to 9d. per pound.
A classic French forcemeat worked into an English game cookery book: pounded rabbit, a bread panada and butter in fixed proportions, poached and sauced. The proportions are the recipe; everything else is technique.
- The hinge: keep everything coldThe mixture is an emulsion of lean meat, butter and egg, and it will split if it warms while being worked. Chill the pounded rabbit, the panada and the bowl, and rest the finished forcemeat in the refrigerator before shaping; the original directs only that it be put "on ice or in a cool place", without specifying how long.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in a minute or two; pulse in short bursts so the friction does not heat the mixture. The final pass through a sieve is not optional if you want the silky texture that defines a quenelle -- push it through a fine drum sieve or a conical strainer with a plastic scraper.
- Panada proportionsSix ounces rabbit to three ounces butter to four ounces panada, by weight -- about 170 g, 85 g and 115 g. Weigh them. The mixture is soft and hard to judge by eye, and too much panada gives a dumpling rather than a quenelle.
- French rollsA French roll of the period was a small, light white bread roll. Use the crumb of any plain white bread or a soft baguette, about 60-80 g before soaking; you only need enough to yield four ounces of finished panada, so make a little extra and weigh out what you want.
- Poach, do not boil"Throw them into boiling water" is best read as bringing salted water or light stock to the boil and then dropping it back to a bare shiver, around 175F/80C, before the quenelles go in. A rolling boil breaks the surface of the forcemeat and the quenelles fall apart.
- Test one firstPoach a teaspoon of the mixture before shaping the rest. If it is dense, work in a spoonful more white sauce or cream; if it collapses, another ounce of panada. This is the only reliable check, and it also lets you correct the seasoning, which the original rightly insists on.
- TimingTen minutes suits quenelles shaped between two dessert spoons, roughly the size of a small egg. Smaller ones need four or five minutes; they are done when they float and feel just firm, and they turn cottony if held longer.
- Sourcing the rabbitOne farmed rabbit of about 1.3 kg yields roughly 500-600 g of boneless meat, more than the six ounces called for. Use the saddle and hind legs for the forcemeat and the forequarters for stock, which will make a better base for the white sauce than water.
- YieldThe three weighed ingredients come to 13 oz, and the eggs, yolk and spoonful of white sauce bring the finished forcemeat to something over a pound -- enough for perhaps ten to a dozen spoon quenelles, four as a first course or two as a main with sauce and a vegetable.
- The costing7d. to 9d. per pound is pre-decimal British currency and belongs to the book's period, not to any modern price.
The quenelle is French through and through -- the name is generally traced to the Alsatian Knödel, a dumpling, and the technique reached English kitchens with the professional French cooks who staffed grand nineteenth-century households. The panada-and-butter forcemeat is a foundation rather than a single dish: the same method takes veal, chicken, pike or, as here, rabbit, and the entry cross-refers to a separate one on moulding quenelles. Rabbit was the cheap end of the game market in Victorian Britain, sold by warreners and poulterers in quantity and eaten across the social scale, which makes this a characteristic Cassell's move -- an haute cuisine technique applied to an everyday meat, with the price per pound quoted so the reader can judge whether the effort is worth it.