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Rabbit, Scallops Of
Pick the meat from the remains of boiled or roasted rabbit. Mince it finely, season with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg, and add a little lemon-juice if liked. Dissolve a small slice of butter in a saucepan, and stir the mince in this over a gentle fire till it is quite hot. Butter some scallop-shells, and cover the inside of each shell with a layer of nicely-seasoned bread-crumbs, or mashed potatoes. Put in a large spoonful of the savoury mince, and sprinkle some more bread-crumbs on the surface. Lay three or four little pieces of butter on the top and head, and brown the mince in a hot oven, or before the fire. Arrange the shells on a neatly-folded napkin, and serve very hot. Time, eight or ten minutes to brown the mince. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the cold meat. Sufficient, the contents of one shell for one person.
A Victorian way of turning cold rabbit into a hot first course. The whole thing hangs on the mince being moist enough not to dry out under the crumbs.
- Moisten the mincePicked cold rabbit is lean, and the butter in the pan may not be enough to carry it. Two or three tablespoons of stock, gravy or cream per cup of mince will help it bind, though the recipe itself calls for none.
- "A hot oven"Read this as 425-450F. The mince is already hot when it goes in, so the oven is only browning the crumb topping — eight to ten minutes is accurate at that heat, or use the broiler for three or four minutes.
- "Before the fire"The alternative is radiant heat striking the shells from a fire in front of them; a modern overhead broiler is the nearest available equivalent. Set the shells four to five inches below the element and watch them; butter-dotted crumbs go from gold to black quickly.
- Scallop-shellsReal shells were commonly used for dishes of this kind, and ceramic versions are still sold as gratin dishes; ovenproof ramekins or small gratin dishes will do the same job. The recipe puts only 'a large spoonful' of mince in each, over a lining of crumbs or mashed potato, so a small capacity is intended.
- "A small slice of butter"Vague by design — about a tablespoon per cup of mince is right for warming it through. The dotted butter on top is a second, separate quantity and matters more, since it is what browns the crumbs.
- "On the top and head"A printer's error for something like "on the top of each". Just dot the butter over the surface.
- Reheating cold cooked meatBring the mince properly hot in the pan before it goes into the shells rather than relying on the oven; the browning time is too short to heat a cold filling through. Rabbit that has been in the refrigerator more than a couple of days is not worth using here.
- YieldOne shell per person as a first course, as the book says. How many shells you get depends entirely on how much meat is left on the carcass.
"Scallops" here means the shell, not the shellfish — a coquille, the dish taking its name from the vessel it is served in. Cassell's devotes a great deal of space to what to do with cold meat, and this is a characteristic answer: mince the remains, season them assertively with nutmeg and lemon, hide them under buttered crumbs, and send them up looking like a made dish rather than leftovers. Rabbit was cheap and widely eaten in Britain through the nineteenth century, wild or hutch-reared, which is why it appears so often in these pages; the costing of fourpence "exclusive of the cold meat" makes the economy explicit. The napkin under the shells is often said to be more than decoration — it is generally assumed to keep hot shells from sliding on the dish as it is carried in.