Rabbit, Curried
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons. -1 rabbit, 2 oz. of butter, 3 onions, 1 pint of stock, 1 tablespoonful of curry-powder, 1 tablespoonful of flour, 1 tablespoonful of mushroom-powder, the juice of lemon, lb. of rice. AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Empty, skin and wash the rabbit thoroughly, and cut it neatly into joints. Put it into a stewpan with the butter and sliced onions, and let them acquire a nice brown colour, but do not allow them to blacken. Pour in the stock, which should be boiling; mix the curry-powder and flour smoothly with a little water, add it to the stock, with the mushroom-powder, and simmer gently for rather more than 1/2 hour squeeze in the lemon-juice and serve in the centre of a dish, with an edging of boiled rice all round. Where economy is studied, water may be substituted for the stock; in RABBIT, FRIED. this case, the meat and onions must be very nicely browned. A little sour apple and rasped cocoa-nut stewed with the curry will be found a great improvement, as in other curries.
TIME.--Altogether, & hour.
SEASONABLE in winter.
A straightforward Anglo-Indian braise built on a jointed rabbit, browned in butter with onions and finished with lemon. The main adjustments are to the timing, which is short for any rabbit that has run wild, and to two ingredients that have largely left the domestic store cupboard.
- The rabbitA whole rabbit dressed for the pot is roughly 2.5-3 lb and feeds four. Farmed rabbit is tender and mild; wild rabbit is leaner, stronger and much tougher, and its meat can be dry unless cooked long and slow.
- Timing"Rather more than half an hour" suits a young farmed animal at a bare simmer. Wild or older rabbit needs 1 to 1.5 hours before the meat leaves the bone willingly. Test the hind legs, which are the last to give.
- BrowningThis is the hinge of the dish, and doubly so if water replaces the stock, as the recipe allows. Colour the joints and onions properly in the butter over a moderate heat -- deep gold, not black -- because that is where the sauce gets its body and depth.
- Mushroom-powderDried mushrooms ground fine, a standard Victorian savoury seasoning. Dried porcini or a mixed-mushroom powder blitzed in a spice grinder does the same job; a tablespoon weighs only a few grams, depending on how finely it is ground.
- Curry-powderNineteenth-century commercial curry powder was heavy on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek, with modest chilli. Any mild all-purpose curry powder gives a comparable result. Frying the powder-and-flour paste briefly in the pan fat before the liquid goes in improves it considerably.
- Missing quantitiesThe lemon is given without an amount -- the juice of half a lemon, added at the end, is enough for a pint of sauce. The rice quantity has also lost its fraction; half a pound of long-grain rice is the usual allowance for four to five as an edging.
- StockA pint is 20 fl oz in British measure, about 2.5 US cups. Chicken stock suits rabbit well. Add it boiling as directed, or the browned fond will seize and the flour will lump.
- Apple and coconutThe closing suggestion is worth taking. One peeled, chopped cooking apple and two tablespoons of desiccated or freshly grated coconut, stewed in from the start, soften the spice and thicken the sauce.
- ServingServes four to five. The rice is piped or spooned as a ring around the edge of a hot dish with the curry in the middle -- a Victorian presentation, but it does keep the rice from going sodden.
Curried rabbit sits at the junction of two Victorian habits: the cheap, plentiful rabbit that fed British households from cottage to club, and the enthusiasm for curry that came home with returning Anglo-Indian families. By Mrs Beeton's day curry-powder was increasingly a bought commodity, though household books of the period, Beeton's included, still gave recipes for blending it at home, and it was applied freely to whatever cold or cheap meat the kitchen had -- veal, fowl, lobster, rabbit. The average cost of two shillings and the note that the dish is "seasonable in winter" are usually taken to reflect the wild rabbit trade, which sent enormous numbers to market in the cold months, though that is inference rather than documented fact. Mushroom-powder, made by drying and grinding mushrooms in autumn, was a home-made savoury seasoning often said to have been kept for exactly this purpose: adding depth to a sauce without a long-simmered stock behind it.