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Rabbit Salad
Cut the flesh of a roasted rabbit into neat slices, and let these lie in a marinade composed of a table-spoonful of vinegar, the same quantity of salad oil, three or four tarragon leaves, or a little tarragon vinegar, a sliced onion, and a little pepper and salt. Turn the meat over, and baste frequently till it is thoroughly impregnated with the flavour of the marinade. Wash and dry well a cabbage lettuce. Shred it finely, and spread it at the bottom of a dish. Arrange the pieces of rabbit on this, and intersperse with them the flesh of two anchovies cut into strips, a tea-spoonful of bruised capers, some chervil, pimpernel, and tarragon leaves finely shredded, a little sliced beetroot, and a hard-boiled egg cut small. Place over these ingredients three or four lettuces cut into quarters, and ornament the salad with hard-boiled eggs, beetroot, etc. At the moment of serving the salad, pour over it a quarter of a pint of good mayonnaise sauce, or if preferred send oil, vinegar, and mustard to table separately. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons. The pieces of rabbit to lie in the marinade for an hour or two.
A composed salad in the Victorian manner, built to be looked at before it is eaten. Everything depends on the rabbit being roasted and cooled first, and on the marinade actually reaching all the meat.
- Start with cooked rabbitThe recipe assumes leftovers from a roast; no weight or size is given. A whole farmed rabbit, roasted through and cooled, will give about the amount of sliced meat this salad wants. Wild rabbit works but is leaner and tougher.
- The marinade is too small as writtenThe marinade is small as written -- A tablespoon each of vinegar and oil is little for the meat of a whole rabbit, which may be why the instruction to turn and baste frequently is there; you may prefer more oil than vinegar, and tossing the slices in a bowl is easier than basting them in a dish. The recipe's own hour or two is right, and modern practice would keep the meat refrigerated.
- PimpernelNot the scarlet pimpernel of the hedgerow but salad burnet, Poterium sanguisorba, which was commonly called pimpernel in older kitchen use. It tastes faintly of cucumber. If you cannot find it, a little cucumber peel or a few borage leaves gives the same effect; skip it rather than substituting anything assertive.
- Cabbage lettuceA heading lettuce rather than a cos: a butterhead such as Boston, Bibb, or a round English lettuce answers well. The shredded base should be soft-leaved; the quartered lettuces laid over the top can be the same or something that holds its shape better on the dish.
- AnchoviesTwo anchovies here most likely means two whole salted fish, giving four fillets. Use four oil-packed fillets, blotted, or four salt-packed ones rinsed and boned.
- A quarter of a pint of mayonnaiseFive fluid ounces in imperial measure, roughly 140 ml or a little over half a cup. Add it at the moment of serving, as directed -- dressed in advance the shredded lettuce collapses quickly.
- Beetroot bleedsSlice the beet and add it late; tossed through early it will tint the whole salad pink. The recipe both intersperses it and uses it as ornament, so keep the pieces distinct.
- Yield and costFive or six people, as the recipe states. The three shillings and sixpence is the original edition's own costing for the whole dish, not for the rabbit alone.
Cassell's belongs to the Victorian period in which the composed salad -- meat, egg, beet, anchovy and herbs arranged in layers and ornamented on the dish -- was familiar middle-class table work, and it sits in a line that runs through the older English salmagundi and the French salade composée. Rabbit is here because it was widely available and comparatively cheap in nineteenth-century Britain, and eaten far more often than it is now; a dish that reads as slightly luxurious today was a way of using the remains of a roast. The herb list gives a sense of what a Victorian kitchen garden held: tarragon, chervil and salad burnet were all grown for salads, the last of which has largely dropped out of use since. The alternative of sending oil, vinegar and mustard to table separately leaves the dressing to the diner, an older habit.