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Barbecued Rabbit
Lay the rabbit in salt and water half an hour, scald with boiling water, wipe dry, grease with butter, and sprinkle with pepper and a little salt. Lay it on the gridiron, turning often so that it may cook through and through without becoming hard and dry. When brown, lay on a hot dish, butter plentifully on both sides, and add a little salt and pepper. Set in the oven, while preparing four teaspoonfuls of vinegar, one of made mustard, and one of currant jelly or brown sugar. Pour this over the rabbit, rubbing it in, then pour over the gravy and serve hot.--Mrs. T.
A gridiron recipe, which means direct heat over coals: a charcoal grill or a heavy ridged pan is the modern equivalent. Rabbit is very lean, and the whole point of the constant turning and the repeated buttering is to keep it from drying to leather.
- The hinge: heat managementRabbit has almost no intramuscular fat, so it goes from underdone to woody in a few minutes. Cook it over medium, indirect-leaning heat rather than a hot bed of coals, turning often as the recipe instructs, and pull it at 160F at the thickest part of the hind leg.
- GridironAn iron grate set over coals. Split the rabbit flat down the backbone so it lies in contact with the bars; a jointed rabbit works too, but the loin pieces will finish well before the legs and should come off first.
- "Scald with boiling water"A cleanliness step from the days of home-dressed game, and unnecessary with a rabbit from a butcher or the freezer case. The half hour in salt water is worth keeping, as it firms the flesh and draws out residual blood; roughly 2 tablespoons salt per quart of water.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard, sold wet in a jar, as opposed to the dry powder that a nineteenth-century pantry kept by default. Any smooth Dijon or plain yellow mustard answers.
- Set in the ovenThis is a warming step only, not a second cooking. A 200F oven for the few minutes it takes to mix the sauce is right; longer and the work of the careful grilling is undone.
- The sauceFour teaspoons vinegar, one of mustard, one of currant jelly or brown sugar is two tablespoons in total, meant to be rubbed in rather than pooled. Cider vinegar suits it better than white.
- "The gravy"The buttery drippings collected in the hot dish while the rabbit rested, not a thickened sauce. Scrape them together with the vinegar mixture and spoon over.
- YieldA whole rabbit runs 2 1/2 to 3 lb dressed and serves two generously, three at a stretch. Farmed rabbit is milder and more tender than wild, which may want longer and gentler cooking.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one carries the tag "Mrs. T." rather than a title alone. Rabbit was everyday meat in the rural South, cheap or free, and a book of this period treats it with none of the ceremony reserved for beef. The finishing mixture of vinegar, mustard and currant jelly reflects what may be one of the older senses of "barbecue": not a long smoke over hardwood but meat cooked on a gridiron and dressed with a sharp, sweet sauce at the table hough pit-cooked whole animals over slow fires went by the same name in these years. Currant jelly with game is a British inheritance, and its appearance here alongside the alternative of brown sugar shows a cook writing for households that might have either a jelly cupboard or not.