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Stewed Rabbit
Cut up the rabbit and wash it. Put it in a stewpan and season it with salt and pepper. Pour in half a pint of water, and when this has nearly stewed away, add half a pint of port wine, two or three blades of mace, and a tablespoonful of flour, mixed with a quarter of a pound of butter. Let it stew gently till quite tender, and then serve hot.--Mrs. C. C.
Stewed Rabbit.
Cut a rabbit into eight pieces. After soaking in salt and water, put it in a stewpan, with a slice of pork or bacon, and with more than enough water to cover it. When nearly done, take out the pieces, strain the water in which they have boiled, and return all to the stewpan, with a teacup of milk, a little pepper, salt, chopped onion and parsley. After this boils up, stir in a heaping tablespoonful of butter, in which a tablespoonful of flour has been rubbed. Let it boil up once more; then serve in a covered dish, with four hard-boiled eggs sliced over it, and grated bread crumbs. The same receipt will answer for squirrel.--Mrs. T.
Two versions from two contributors: the first a rich port-and-mace braise, the second a plainer milk-thickened stew finished with egg and crumbs. Both assume a rabbit you jointed yourself and a fire you could turn down and forget.
- The measuresHalf a pint is one cup; a teacupful in these books is smaller than a modern measuring cup, somewhere between a half and three-quarters. A quarter of a pound of butter is eight tablespoons — a full stick — and with only a tablespoon of flour it enriches rather than thickens. Halve it if you want a lighter sauce.
- Rabbit, wild or farmedA farmed rabbit runs 2.5-3 lb and turns tender in 45 minutes to an hour. A wild one — most likely what these contributors had to hand — needs 1.5 to 2 hours of genuinely gentle simmering. "Till quite tender" is the only instruction that matters here; rabbit goes stringy if boiled hard and dry if overcooked past that point.
- Watch the liquid in the first versionThe water is meant to stew nearly away before the port goes in, which concentrates the rabbit's own juices. Keep the lid ajar and the heat low, and do not let the pan go dry over direct heat or the butter and flour will scorch when they hit it.
- Blades of maceMace is the dried outer covering of the nutmeg, sold in blades or ground. Two or three blades is roughly a quarter teaspoon of ground mace, give or take, since blade sizes vary; add ground mace late — it loses its aroma in a long simmer, and it cannot be fished out at the end the way blades can.
- PortA full cup of port in a stew this size is assertive. Use a ruby port rather than a tawny or a sweet dessert style, and expect the finished sauce to be dark and slightly sweet, which is the point.
- Beurre manié, not a rouxBoth versions call for flour rubbed into soft butter and stirred into simmering liquid. Work it to a smooth paste first, add it in pieces, and let the stew boil once to cook out the raw flour taste. Adding it as cold lumps gives you floury threads.
- The soakSoaking jointed rabbit in salted water draws out blood and any gaminess, which matters more with wild rabbit. Thirty minutes to a few hours in the refrigerator does it; drain and pat dry before it goes in the pan.
- ServingEither version feeds three or four. The second is essentially a fricassee — serve it over rice, or with biscuits to take up the milk gravy, with the sliced eggs and crumbs scattered on at the table so the crumbs stay dry.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from receipts contributed by named and initialed Virginia housewives, which is why the same dish appears twice in slightly different clothes — the book preserves the contributors rather than reconciling them. Rabbit and squirrel were everyday Southern meat, not novelty game: cheap, plentiful, and shot or trapped close to the house, which is why Mrs. T. can note offhandedly that the same receipt answers for squirrel. The second version, thickened with milk and butter and dressed with sliced hard-boiled egg and crumbs, follows the pattern of the English white fricassee that ran through American cookery from the eighteenth century onward; the first, with its port and mace, belongs to the older, more openly aristocratic tradition of wine-braised game, and mace in particular was a standard savory spice in Anglo-American kitchens long before nutmeg's sweeter reputation crowded it out.