Rabbits
St. Evremond, about two hundred years ago, praised the rabbits of England as incomparable. Now the Ostend rabbit has the great name. Of the wild rabbit, Grimod de la Reynière says that "its flesh is whiter, more tender, and more juicy than that of the hare, and when young it is delicate and easily digested. Nourished on thyme, wild thyme, and marjoram, barded with bacon, and cooked to the proper point, it perfumes the mouth and inundates the palate with delights. As for tame rabbits, we insist on their proscription; for ever since Despréaux, these game of the stableyard, elevés dans Paris, Sentent encore le chou dont ils furent nourris."
The young rabbit or cony (connil) has given his name to the most delicate of the forcemeats, the Quenelle; and there is an excellent Rabbit Soup made after the manner of the Queen's Chicken broth-the Potage à la Reine.
Smothered Rabbit. This is the name given in England to boiled rabbit. It is smothered with a white onion sauce, and it is served with boiled bacon.
Fricassee of Rabbit is done in the same way as fricassee of chicken.
Gibelote of Rabbit. - Put a quarter of a pound of butter into a stewpan with a spoonful of flour; make a white roux of them, and pass in it for a short time the rabbit cut into pieces, and some bacon cut into dice. Then add some small onions, some mushrooms, a faggot of sweet-herbs, pepper and salt, and moisten all with half broth, half white wine (French). Let all cook slowly till it is nearly ready, then briskly, to reduce the liquid. Remove the faggot and the fat from the gibelote, and serve it piping hot.
Radish
The entry is half essay, half instruction; the only fully worked recipe is the gibelote, which is a white rabbit stew in wine. It assumes a jointed rabbit of roughly 2–3 lb and a cook who knows what a roux should look like.
- The hinge: keep the roux blondA white roux means the flour is cooked in the butter only until it smells nutty and stays pale straw — two or three minutes over moderate heat. Let it colour and the gibelote turns brown and heavy, which is a different dish.
- Quantities to fill inA quarter pound of butter is 115 g; the "spoonful" of flour is undefined, probably a tablespoon or so. Either way it is a very butter-heavy roux by modern standards, and much less butter will thicken the same liquid. The recipe gives no amounts at all for the bacon, onions and mushrooms; something like 4 oz diced bacon or salt pork, a dozen small onions and 8 oz mushrooms suits one rabbit, but that is an editorial guess.
- Faggot of sweet-herbsA bundle of parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string — a bouquet garni. It is pulled out before serving, as the recipe says.
- Half broth, half white wineTake "white wine (French)" as a dry white rather than a sweet one; the book says no more than that. Enough liquid to barely cover the meat, roughly 2 cups in total.
- TimingFarmed rabbit is tender: 35–45 minutes at a bare simmer will do it, and the loin pieces are done before the legs. The final "briskly, to reduce" is best done with the meat lifted out, so it does not shred.
- Removing the fatWith that much butter and bacon the sauce will be greasy unless it is skimmed, which is why the recipe says to remove the fat. Tilting the pan and lifting the fat off the shoulder of the liquid is quicker than chasing it with a spoon.
- Smothered rabbitNot a recipe so much as a description: the rabbit is boiled, masked in a white onion sauce (the book does not say what the sauce is built on), and served with boiled bacon. Any current onion-sauce recipe will do the work the book leaves out.
- SourcingWild rabbit is lean, darker and needs the barding with bacon the text describes; farmed rabbit does not, but benefits from the diced bacon in the pot. A butcher will joint either on request.
- YieldOne rabbit, gibelote-style, serves three or four with bread or potatoes.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877), generally attributed to the journalist E. S. Dallas rather than to the restaurateur Auguste Kettner whose Soho establishment gave it its name, is written in exactly this manner: a paragraph of gastronomic quotation followed, almost grudgingly, by a working method. The authorities cited are the standard ones for a Victorian writer showing his French credentials he exiled wit who spent his last decades in England; Grimod de La Reynière, author of the Almanach des gourmands; and Boileau-Despréaux, whose couplet about Paris-reared rabbits still smelling of the cabbage they were fed on was a stock joke about the difference between wild and hutch meat. The claim that quenelle derives from connil, the old French word for a young rabbit, is Dallas's own flourish and is not accepted; the word is usually traced to the German Knödel, a dumpling. Gibelote is the domestic cousin of civet and is probably, though not certainly, connected to gibier, game — in France it almost always means rabbit, and almost always means wine.