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Rabbit, Tinned
Take the rabbit from the tin, separate the pieces; cut up six to eight ounces of cooked ham or bacon into little slices, then put alternate layers of all in a jar, with some onion sauce (see SOUBISE SAUCE) top and bottom. Cover this, and set it in a saucepan of boiling water, until the rabbit has become heated through, then turn out on a hot dish. Tinned rabbit may also be used for potted meats, and eaten cold with a nice salad is very appetising. It may be converted into curries, fricassees, and similar dishes at little cost and trouble, or it may be re-heated and served with onion sauce like a freshly boiled rabbit. Probable cost, 1s. to 1s. 6d. per tin.
A late-Victorian assembly job rather than a cooked dish: tinned rabbit, ham and onion sauce layered in a jar and warmed in a water bath. Almost everything here still works, but the ingredients need translating.
- Tinned rabbitCanned rabbit is no longer a grocery item in most countries, though it turns up in European delicatessens and online game suppliers. Cooked rabbit from a braise, or the picked meat from a roast, substitutes directly " the recipe only assumes the meat is already tender.
- The jar and the water bathThe "jar" is a straight-sided stoneware or earthenware crock, covered with a cloth or lid and stood in a pan of simmering water ing. Any heatproof bowl or wide-mouth jar in a saucepan of gently boiling water does the same. This is reheating, not cooking, so the point is to warm the meat without drying or shredding it.
- TimingThe recipe gives no time, only "until the rabbit has become heated through"; roughly fifteen to twenty minutes in the water bath should do it. Much longer and the already-cooked rabbit is likely to turn stringy; there is nothing left in it to soften.
- Onion sauce / SoubiseSoubise is onions cooked soft in butter and milk or stock, sieved or pounded to a pur or b chamel-bound pur e. Allow enough -- something like a pint -- for the layer above and below the meat.
- Ham quantitySix to eight ounces is 170 230 g enough sliced ham or bacon to make two or three thin layers. Use cooked ham; raw bacon will not cook through in a water bath.
- PottingFor the potted-meat suggestion, pound or process the rabbit with about a quarter its weight in butter and season firmly with mace, pepper and nutmeg. Modern practice is to treat it as a fresh p t refrigerate and eat within three or four days rather than relying on a butter seal for storage.
- Yield and costThe recipe gives no yield; a tin plus the ham would probably stretch to three or four servings with potatoes or bread. The "1s. to 1s. 6d. per tin" is a shilling to eighteen pence.
This entry belongs to the first generation of British cooks who had reliable tinned meat to work with. Canning moved from naval and expedition supply into ordinary grocery shops over the second half of the nineteenth century, and Australian and continental factories sent tinned rabbit, mutton and beef to Britain in quantity rabbit especially, since Australia's introduced rabbit population had become a plague by the 1880s and there was commercial sense in eating it. Cassell's seems to treat the tin without embarrassment but also without much enthusiasm: the advice is largely about disguising the flat, uniform texture of preserved meat with onion sauce, curry spice or the butter and mace of a potted paste. Onion sauce with boiled rabbit was the standard English pairing, so serving the tinned version the same way was a way of making the substitute read as the original at table.