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Rabbit, with Herbs
Skin, empty, and wash a rabbit, and cut it into pieces the size of an egg. If the head is used split it in halves. Fry the pieces in a little hot fat, and turn them about till they are equally and lightly browned. Dredge a table-spoonful of flour over them, and add eight or ten mushrooms chopped small, a shallot finely minced, a table-spoonful of parsley, a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice, and a little pepper and salt. Pour over them a quarter of a pint of good gravy, and let all simmer gently together till tender. Crush the liver of the rabbit (which has been previously boiled for ten minutes), and mix it with the gravy. A glassful of sherry may be added or not. Serve very hot. Time, altogether, an hour or more. Probable cost of rabbit, 7d. to 9d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward brown fricassée of rabbit, thickened twice — once with flour, once with the puréed liver. Only a few things need translating for a modern cook.
- The liver is the hingeAdd the crushed liver at the very end and keep the pan below a simmer afterwards. Liver protein sets hard and grainy if boiled, and the sauce it is meant to enrich will go granular instead of glossy.
- A quarter of a pintImperial measure, so 5 fl oz — a generous half cup. It is a small amount by design: the sauce should coat rather than pool, so keep the lid on while it simmers or reduce the heat.
- "Good gravy"In cookery of this period the phrase means a well-flavoured brown meat stock or gravy rather than a floured pan sauce. Brown veal or chicken stock, or rabbit stock made from the bones and trimmings, is the closest thing now.
- Which rabbitA farmed rabbit of 2.5-3 lb is what most butchers sell, and it is tender in 40-50 minutes of gentle simmering. Wild rabbit is leaner and tougher and may want a full hour or more, as the recipe allows.
- Jointing"Pieces the size of an egg" suggests roughly the two hind legs split, the forelegs whole, and the saddle cut across into two or three. The head is optional now and usually not supplied; nothing else in the dish depends on it.
- MushroomsEight or ten small button mushrooms is roughly 4-6 oz. Chestnut or brown mushrooms give more of the earthy note the dish was built around than modern white buttons.
- The sherryIf used, add it with the stock rather than at the end so the alcohol cooks off. A dry amontillado or fino suits the lemon juice better than a cream sherry.
- YieldFour or five servings assumes a Victorian table of several dishes. A single farmed rabbit realistically feeds three, or four with mashed potato or buttered noodles to catch the sauce.
Rabbit was the cheap meat of Victorian Britain — the price quoted here, a few pence a pound, put it well below beef or mutton, and it appears throughout Cassell's in stews, pies, curries and moulds. Wild rabbits were plentiful, and hutch-raised rabbits were kept in some households as a supplement to the budget. The method here is essentially a brown fricassée: brown the meat, dust with flour, moisten with stock, finish with an acid and an offal liaison. Thickening a sauce with the pounded liver of the animal itself is an old technique, still visible in French civet and in the Italian practice of finishing hare sauces with liver, and it does the double work of body and depth in a dish whose lean meat gives up very little of its own richness.