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Rabbit, Roast, Plain
Skin, empty, and wash a plump young rabbit. Truss it firmly, the fore-legs backwards, the back-legs forwards, and the head fixed in an up-right position by means of a string passing across the shoulders. Tie one or two rashers of fat bacon over the back, put the rabbit down to a clear fire, and baste it well until done enough. Put it on a hot dish, remove the skewers, garnish with slices of fried bacon, and send to table with a sauce prepared as follows. Cut an ounce of lean ham or bacon into dice. Put these into a stewpan with a small slice of fresh butter, a table-spoonful of chopped carrot, a tea-spoonful of chopped onion, an inch or two of celery, a small sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, half a tea-spoonful of peppercorns, and a pinch of powdered mace. Stir these ingredients with a wooden spoon over a gentle fire until they are well browned. Pour over them a tea-spoonful of ketchup, a table-spoonful of vinegar, and half a tea-spoonful of essence of anchovy. Simmer all gently together for ten minutes, add a quarter of a pint of stock, and a glass of sherry, and simmer again until the sauce is pleasantly flavoured. Add a dessert-spoonful of brown thickening, or failing this a table-spoonful of flour mixed smoothly with a little cold water, and a spoonful of sugar browning. Boil a few minutes longer, and serve very hot. Time to roast the rabbit, three-quarters of an hour to one hour; less if the rabbit be small. Probable cost of rabbit, 7d. to 9d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A spit-roast rabbit with a small brown sauce built on a browned mirepoix. The sauce is the part worth keeping; the roasting needs the most translation, since an open fire and a modern oven behave very differently with an animal this lean.
- Barding is not optionalFarmed rabbit carries almost no fat and dries out fast. The bacon tied over the back and the constant basting are what keep it edible, so keep both — and add a little more fat than the one or two rashers if the loin looks bare.
- From spit to oven"Down to a clear fire" means a bright, smokeless fire with the meat turning in front of it. In an oven, roast at about 400F, basting every ten minutes or so; a 2½–3 lb rabbit will take roughly 45 minutes to an hour, matching the book's timing.
- DonenessRabbit is a white meat and should reach 160-165F at the thickest part of the hind leg. Beyond that it turns stringy quickly. The original simply notes that a smaller rabbit needs less time.
- The headTrussing the head upright was a presentation convention of the period, and most rabbits sold today come headless. Skip it and truss the legs only; nothing is lost but the Victorian tableau.
- MeasuresA quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz imperial, so a generous half-cup (about 140 ml) of stock. A 'glass' of sherry in Victorian receipts is usually taken as a wineglassful, conventionally around 2 fl oz. A dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons.
- Ketchup and essence of anchovyThe ketchup meant here is mushroom or walnut ketchup, thin, dark and salty, not tomato. Essence of anchovy is a bottled anchovy sauce; anchovy paste thinned with a little water is the nearest thing on a modern shelf.
- Brown thickening and sugar browningBrown thickening is a roux cooked to a nut colour, kept ready in the larder. Sugar browning is plain caramel used only for colour — caramelise a spoon of sugar until dark and stop it with a splash of water. The flour slurry the recipe offers as a fallback works, but cook it out for a few minutes to lose the raw taste.
- Strain the sauceThe dice of ham, the peppercorns, bay and thyme are flavourings, not garnish. Pass the finished sauce through a sieve before it goes to table.
- YieldFour to five, as stated, is optimistic by modern portions unless the rabbit is a large one. Reckon on one rabbit for three.
Cassell's prices rabbit at 7d. to 9d. a pound, which puts it firmly among the cheap meats of late Victorian Britain — wild rabbit was abundant, said to have been hawked from barrows, and a staple of households that could not run to a joint of beef. The elaborate sauce here is the giveaway: it is a small brown sauce in the French manner, mirepoix browned with ham, sharpened with vinegar and anchovy, lifted with sherry, and it exists to dignify an inexpensive carcass. The upright head and the crossed legs belong to a long English tradition of trussing game to look like itself at table. Rabbit's fall from British menus is usually traced to the myxomatosis outbreaks of the 1950s, after which a generation lost the habit of eating it.