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Rabbit, Turban Of
Skin, empty, and wash two or three plump young rabbits. Pass a sharp knife down each side of the backbone, put the point underneath and raise the flesh in neat fillets. Cut off the legs, take out the bones, and divide the flesh in halves lengthwise. Lard all these fillets thickly and evenly with strips of fat bacon. Pick the rest of the meat from the bones, and make it into forcemeat by mincing it finely and mixing with it a third of its weight in fat and lean bacon, a few bread-crumbs, and a little pepper and salt. Bind the mixture together with the yolks of one or two eggs. Make a case of pastry, such as is used for raised pies. To do this, put a pound of flour into a bowl, make a hollow in the centre, and stir into this half a pint of boiling water in which has been dissolved four ounces of lard and a pinch of salt. Work this first with a spoon, and afterwards with the hand, to a smooth stiff paste. Mould it into a circular case, from two to three inches high, brush it over with yolk of egg, fill it with flour, and bake in a well-heated oven till it is firmly set. Let it cool, turn out the flour, and spread the forcemeat all over the inside. Fill the vacant space evenly and compactly with the meat from the legs. Place the fillets from the back over the top to show the larding, and put a slice of ham between each piece to give the dish a pretty appearance. Wrap the whole meat and case together in a thick fold of oiled paper, and bake in a moderate oven. Remove the paper. Hold a salamander or red-hot shovel over the top of the turban for three or four minutes to crisp the lardoons, make a little hole in the centre and pour into this a little gravy, place the case on a neatly-folded napkin, garnish the dish with parsley, etc., and serve very hot. If liked, a few mushrooms may be stewed in gravy, and laid upon and around the turban. The gravy may be made as follows. Put the bones of the rabbits into a stewpan with as much stock or water as will cover them, and add an onion stuck with two cloves, three or four outer sticks of celery, a dozen peppercorns, and a little salt. Let all simmer gently together till the gravy is strong and pleasantly flavoured. Strain it, and put it back into the saucepan, stir into it a slice of butter rolled in flour, and boil it till it is smooth and thick. Add a quarter of a pint of cream. A spoonful or two of this sauce may be poured into the turban, and the rest sent to table in a tureen. Time to bake, about an hour. Sufficient for a luncheon or supper dish. Probable cost of rabbits, 7d. to 9d. per pound.
A raised-pie case used as a serving vessel, filled with larded rabbit fillets and a forcemeat of the trimmings. Most of the work is butchery and pastry; the baking is short.
- The hinge: bake the case blind and let it coolThe hot-water crust is moulded, filled with loose flour to hold its shape, and baked until firmly set before any meat goes near it. If you fill a soft case it will slump, and the forcemeat lining will not adhere to a warm wall. The flour poured out afterwards can be sieved and used for other baking.
- Imperial volumesHalf a pint of boiling water is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups; a quarter pint of cream is 5 fl oz, about 2/3 US cup. "A slice of butter" for the beurre manie means roughly an ounce, kneaded with an equal spoonful of flour.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives only "well-heated" and "moderate". These are usually taken today as roughly 400-425F for setting the pastry case and around 350F for the filled turban. An hour should be ample for boned rabbit; check that the fillets read 160F at the centre rather than trusting the clock, since the paper wrapping slows browning and hides the state of the meat.
- LardingRabbit is extremely lean and will dry out uncovered, which is the whole point of threading it thickly with strips of fat bacon. Use a larding needle if you have one; otherwise wrap each fillet in thin bacon or barding fat, accepting that you lose the striped surface the recipe wants to show off.
- SalamanderA flat iron plate heated red and held over food to glaze it. A broiler set high for two or three minutes does the same job on the exposed lardoons; watch it, as the pastry rim scorches faster than the bacon crisps.
- The rabbits"plump young rabbits" in this period could be wild or hutch-reared; the farmed rabbit on sale today runs about 2 1/2 to 3 lb each and suits this dish better than wild, which is tougher and better stewed. One larger rabbit plus extra pork for the forcemeat will fill a case of comparable size; the recipe stipulates only a circular case two to three inches high.
- Oiled paperButtered parchment, tied or tucked around the whole case, does the work of the oiled paper. It keeps the pastry from colouring while the filling cooks through.
- Gravy and yieldThe bone stock needs long enough to taste strong, an hour or two; add the cream off the boil so it does not split. The recipe calls it sufficient for a luncheon or supper dish without giving a number of covers. The pastry case here is structural rather than the point of the dish.
The turban is a French presentation form -- en turban -- in which meat is arranged in a ring or a round mould so the finished dish resembles a wound headdress, and it belongs to the nineteenth-century tradition of building food into architecture for the buffet table. Cassell's gives many ways of serving rabbit, of which this is one of the more elaborate; the quoted 7d. to 9d. per pound is the book's own figure. The hot-water crust used here is the standard English raised-pie paste, stiff enough to be moulded by hand without a tin, and in its original use as a pork-pie or game-pie case it was as much container as food, sealing and later preserving the meat inside. The salamander, a heated iron on a long handle, was common equipment in a coal-range kitchen and fell out of use as overhead gas and electric grills spread.