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Broiled Rabbit
Skin, singe and wipe rabbit. Prepare for broiler like chicken and cook over charcoal embers till done. Season with salt and pepper just before it is finished and pour over melted shortening mixed with 2 tablespoons vinegar, 1 tablespoon mustard. Serve with Ravigote sauce. Serves four.
A camp recipe written for a whole rabbit split and flattened over a charcoal fire. The main adjustments are heat management and doneness, since rabbit is far leaner than chicken and punishes a hot, fast fire.
- The hinge: embers, not flames"Charcoal embers" means coals burned down to a steady grey ash with no flame, roughly medium heat. Rabbit set over live flame scorches outside while the saddle stays raw; keep the grate 4-6 inches above settled coals and move the pieces to a cooler edge if fat drips cause flare-ups.
- Splitting it "like chicken"For broiling, a bird was split down the back and pressed flat. Do the same with the rabbit, or joint it into two front legs, two hind legs and the saddle cut in two, which cooks more evenly than a flattened whole animal.
- Size and timingA dressed farmed rabbit runs 2 1/2 to 3 lb. Expect about 25-35 minutes over medium coals, turning every 5 minutes. Cook to 160F at the thickest part of the hind leg; the meat is lean and dries out quickly past that.
- ShorteningIn this period "shortening" usually meant lard or hydrogenated vegetable fat, though butter was commonly used in its place. The recipe gives no quantity; melted butter or a neutral oil works, whisked with the vinegar and mustard to make a thin basting dressing rather than a true emulsion.
- MustardThe recipe does not specify the type. A full tablespoon suggests prepared mustard rather than dry powder; if using powder, use about a teaspoon and slake it in the vinegar first.
- Salt late, as writtenSeasoning near the end follows the usual period advice for broiling, that salt applied early draws moisture to the surface. Season in the last few minutes and again after the dressing goes on.
- Ravigote sauceThe classic accompaniment is a vinaigrette-style ravigote with shallot, capers, chopped parsley, chervil and tarragon; the warm version is a velouté finished with herb butter. Either suits the vinegar-and-mustard basting.
- Handling wild rabbitIf the rabbit is wild rather than farmed, wear gloves when skinning and dressing it, and wash hands, knife and board afterwards. Cooking to 160F throughout deals with the meat itself.
Broiled rabbit belongs to a long line of split-and-grilled small game dishes -- the same treatment given to spring chicken, squab and quail -- and rabbit was cheap, widely trapped and easy to carry to a camp. Rabbit was a routine market meat in the United States well into the mid-twentieth century, and domestic breeding for the table expanded during the Second World War when other meats were rationed. The finish here is a sharp one: melted fat cut with vinegar and mustard, then ravigote, a French sauce whose name comes from ravigoter, to perk up or revive, and which exists in both a cold vinaigrette form and a warm velout\