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Rabbit Soup
Skin and empty a rabbit; lay the liver aside. Cut the body into joints, flour the pieces, and fry them lightly; put them in a stewpan with the liver and three pints of good stock made from bones, let them simmer as gently as possible for an hour, or until the rabbit is done enough, carefully removing the scum as it rises. Take out the rabbit, cut off the best of the meat, lay it in a covered dish, and put it in a cool place. Bruise the bones, and put them back into the stock, and with them two onions, a shallot, a carrot, a small bunch of parsley, a pinch of thyme, three or four outer sticks of celery, and a little salt and cayenne. Simmer the broth two hours longer. Take out the liver, rub it till smooth with the back of a wooden spoon, moisten with a little of the liquor, and return it to the soup. Just before sending to table add half a glassful of port and a tea-spoonful of mushroom ketchup. Cut the pieces of meat into dice, let them get quite hot without boiling, and serve immediately. Time, three hours. Probable cost, 10d. per pint. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A two-stage soup: the rabbit is cooked for its meat, then the bones do a second, longer shift as stock. The instructions assume you will strain before serving, though they never say so.
- Strain before finishingAfter the second two-hour simmer the pot is full of bruised bone, onion and celery. Strain the broth through a sieve and return it to a clean pan before the liver, port and ketchup go in — otherwise splinters end up in the bowl.
- QuantitiesThree pints of stock is about 1.7 litres, or roughly 7.2 US cups, if you read it as Imperial pints, which this British book does. A wine glass of the period was small, around 2 fl oz, so half a glassful of port is about 1 fl oz.
- The rabbitFarmed rabbit runs 2.5–3 lb dressed and will be tender in the hour given. A wild rabbit — quite possibly what the book had in mind, though it does not say — is leaner and tougher and may want 90 minutes; the recipe's own test is "until the rabbit is done enough." Rabbit livers are rarely sold with the animal now — ask a butcher, or leave it out and accept a thinner-bodied soup.
- The liverIt goes into the pan at the start and is not lifted out until after the second two-hour simmer, so it has cooked some three hours before being rubbed smooth. Push it through a sieve or blitz it with a ladle of hot broth; it gives the soup body, and once it is in, keep the soup below a simmer or it will curdle into grains.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice condiment, still sold by specialist grocers and not remotely like tomato ketchup. Worcestershire sauce or a spoonful of soy plus a little mushroom soaking liquid gives a comparable savoury edge.
- Reheating the meatThe diced meat is warmed through in the finished soup without boiling. Rabbit is very lean and seizes into cotton wool if it boils twice, which is one plain advantage of the recipe's pulling it out early and parking it in a cool place.
- Frying the floured jointsColour only — a light golden fry, not a hard sear. The flour is there for flavour and a slight body in the stock, so keep the fat moderate and do not let it scorch, since burnt flour will taint three pints of broth.
- YieldFive or six persons, as stated. The "probable cost, 10d. per pint" is a Victorian housekeeping figure and no guide to anything today.
Rabbit was cheap protein in Victorian Britain — poached, snared, farmed in backyard hutches, and widely sold in markets — which is why Cassell's can quote a per-pint cost of tenpence and treat the animal as an everyday soup base rather than game. The method here is pure nineteenth-century economy: one carcass yields both the garnish and the stock, the bones are bruised to give up their gelatine, and even the liver is put to work as a thickener, a trick often traced to older French practice where pounded liver bound sauces. The finishing splash of port and mushroom ketchup is a familiar Victorian touch, added, as the recipe has it, just before sending to table.