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Rabbit Sausages
Skin, empty, and wash a couple of fresh young rabbits. Cut off the heads, divide the rabbits into joints, and pick the meat from the bones. Bruise the latter, and put them with the heads into a saucepan with as much cold water as will barely cover them. Let them simmer gently until the gravy is very strong, shaking the saucepan occasionally to keep the bones from burning. Mince the meat finely, and put it aside for a short time. Wash the livers, first carefully removing the gall-bags, put them in a stewpan with a slice of fresh butter, or if preferred a spoonful or two of water, and let them simmer gently until sufficiently done. Drain them, cut them up into small pieces, and put them with the minced rabbit. Weigh the meat, and with each three pounds put one pound of fat bacon coarsely chopped, adding an ounce and a half of salt, a quarter of an ounce of white pepper, two cloves finely pounded, and a pinch of powdered mace. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and moisten the meat with the gravy strained and seasoned like the rabbits. A quarter of a pint of gravy will be enough for two rabbits, and it should be used while still warm. Fill carefully-prepared skins, and the sausages will be ready for boiling or frying. This preparation is very good put into one large skin, boiled gently until done enough, and served cold.
A fresh sausage, not a cured one: everything here is seasoned raw and then boiled or fried, so the usual fresh-sausage rules apply. The instructions are complete except for weights of the rabbit itself and any hint of yield.
- What two rabbits give youA pair of young rabbits will not yield a fixed amount; picked meat from two might come to somewhere around 2 to 3 lb depending on size, and the recipe's pegging of a quarter-pint of gravy to two rabbits suggests it has something near its 3 lb unit in mind. Wild rabbit runs leaner and smaller, so weigh the meat before scaling the salt and spice, as the recipe directs.
- The ratio is the recipeThree parts meat to one part fat bacon is 25 per cent bacon by weight, and rather less than that in actual fat. Rabbit carries very little intramuscular fat of its own; do not reduce the bacon.
- Salt levelAn ounce and a half of salt to 4 lb of total mix is about 2.3 per cent, on the salty side by current practice, and the fat bacon adds more. Around 1.5 to 1.8 per cent total is the modern range for fresh sausage.
- A quarter of a pint of gravyFive fluid ounces in Imperial measure, a scant two-thirds of a US cup. It goes in warm so it disperses through the mince rather than setting into lumps of jelly; the strong bone stock is what gives the sausage its bind and moisture.
- Gall bagsThe gall bladder sits against the liver and must come away whole. A nicked one spoils the liver and anything mixed with it, so cut generously around it and discard the surrounding tissue.
- "Fresh butter"Unsalted butter. The distinction mattered when most butter was salted for keeping, and here it matters again because the mix is already well salted.
- Skins"Carefully-prepared skins" means natural casings, rinsed and soaked; hog casings of about 32-35 mm suit this mix. Fill without air pockets and prick any you see before cooking.
- Cooking temperaturesFry or poach until the centre reaches 160-165F. For the large single skin served cold, poach it at a bare 170-175F rather than a rolling boil, which splits casings and squeezes out the fat you just worked in.
- YieldIf the picked meat comes to the recipe's 3 lb unit, the mix is about 4 lb, or roughly 16 links at 4 oz. The whole-skin version is a boiling ring, sliced cold like a coarse galantine.
Rabbit was among the cheaper meats in the British larder through much of the nineteenth century, and was sold live or freshly killed by street hawkers. Turning it into sausage solved rabbit's two defects at once: the meat is exceptionally lean, so chopped bacon supplies the fat, and the carcass is mostly bone, so simmering the frames and heads for a strong gravy recovers what the picking left behind. Clove and mace belong to an older English seasoning habit rather than the sage-and-pepper mix associated with the commercial breakfast sausage. Poaching the whole thing in one large skin and serving it cold follows the same logic as a galantine or a boiling ring, and made the dish useful for cold suppers and picnic tables at a time when a joint of butcher's meat was a considered expense.