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Rabbit En Casserole
2 rabbits. 1 bay leaf. 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 ozs.) butter. 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 ozs.) flour. 1/2 pint (1 cup) cold water. 1 tablespoonful Worcestershire sauce. 2 sliced onions 2 celery stalks 1 cupful chopped carrots I bay leaf 1 pint (2 cups) hot water 1/2 pint (I cup) cold water shire sauce 1 tablespoonful Worcester- 12 stoned olives 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 1 tablespoonful capers ozs.) butter 2 tablespoonfuls dripping 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 Salt and pepper ozs.) flour Skin and joint the rabbits, then put them into an earthenware pan, add the onions, celery, carrots, bay leaf, dripping, and cold water.
Simmer for thirty minutes, then remove the rabbits.
Add the butter and flour to the pan, stir over the fire till brown, then add the hot water, stirring till smooth, add the salt, sauce, capers, olives, pepper, and rabbits. Cover closely and bake for forty minutes.
I cooked duck
A two-stage braise: the rabbit is first simmered with aromatics, then returned to a brown sauce built in the same pot and finished in the oven. The method works, but the quantities need reading with care.
- How much rabbitThe instructions say "the rabbits" (plural) while the ingredient list gives no number. Two whole rabbits, roughly 5-6 lb jointed, suit the quantity of vegetables and 3 cups of total liquid; one rabbit will want the sauce ingredients halved.
- The casserole is the potThis recipe calls for an earthenware pan that goes on the fire and then into the oven. A modern enamelled cast-iron Dutch oven does the same job; a thin ceramic bake dish will crack over direct heat.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only "bake". Forty minutes covered at 325-350F brings farmed rabbit to tender without drying the saddle. Wild rabbit is leaner and older and may want 60-75 minutes.
- DrippingBeef or pork dripping, the saved fat from a roast. Lard, bacon fat or a neutral oil substitutes directly; the dripping here is mostly for flavour, since the roux is made with butter.
- Making the roux in the potAfter removing the rabbit the pan still holds the cold-water braise and the vegetables. Cook the butter and flour in that until it browns properly before the hot water goes in, or the sauce tastes of raw flour. Add the hot water in stages and whisk smooth.
- Stoned olives and capersStoned means pitted. The recipe does not say which olives; green olives in brine are the likeliest reading. Rinse both olives and capers if they are heavily salted, and hold back on salt until the sauce is assembled and tasted.
- MeasuresA pint here is the US pint, 2 cups, as the recipe itself spells out. Two heaping tablespoonfuls of butter or flour is given as 2 oz, which is about 4 tablespoons of butter or a scant half-cup of flour.
- YieldTwo rabbits done this way serve six; one rabbit serves three. Mashed potato, noodles or plain boiled rice take the sauce well.
Rabbit was cheap protein on both sides of the Atlantic well into the twentieth century, sold jointed by butchers and poulterers alongside game birds. The treatment here is a stew dressed up in French clothes: en casserole indicated a dish cooked, and often brought to table, in the same earthenware vessel -- a style promoted as economical, since long slow heat made cheap and elderly meat palatable and nothing was lost to a second pan. The olives, capers and Worcestershire sharpen a sauce that would otherwise taste mostly of flour and dripping.