Rabbit, Fried
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons.-1 rabbit, flour, dripping, 1 oz. of butter, 1 teaspoonful of minced shalot, 2 tablespoonfuls of mushroom-ketchup. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 8d. Cut the rabbit into neat joints, and flour them well; make the dripping boil in a frying-pan, put in the rabbit, and fry it a nice brown. Have ready a very hot dish, put in the butter, shalot and ketchup; arrange the rabbit pyramidically on this, and serve as quickly as possible.
TIME.--10 minutes.
SEASONABLE from September to February.
Note. The rabbit may be brushed over with egg, and sprinkled with bread-crumbs, and fried as above. When cooked in this manner, make a gravy in the pan, and pour it round, but not over, the pieces of rabbit.
Rabbit à la Minute. INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons.-1 rabbit, 1/4 lb. of butter, salt and pepper to taste, 2 blades of pounded mace, 3 dried mushrooms, 2 tablespoonfuls of minced parsley, 2 teaspoonfuls of flour, 2 glasses of sherry, 1 pint of water. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 3d.
Empty, skin and wash the rabbit thoroughly, and cut it into joints. Put the butter into a stewpan with the pieces of rabbit; add salt, pepper and pounded mace, and let it cook until three parts done; then put in the remaining ingredients, and boil for about 10 minutes; it will then be ready to serve. Fowls or hare may be dressed in the same manner.
TIME.--Altogether, 35 minutes.
SEASONABLE from September to February.
Two rabbit dishes run together: a quick fry finished with a butter-and-ketchup dressing in the dish rather than a sauce in the pan, and a stew of sorts called à la minute. Both assume a young rabbit that will cook through in minutes, which is the main thing to check before starting.
- The hinge: the age of the rabbitTen minutes of frying only works on a young rabbit with thin, tender joints. Farmed rabbit sold today is usually 2.5-3 lb and the hind legs are dense; fry the saddle and forelegs by all means, but the legs are better browned and then braised until the meat gives at the bone. Rabbit is cooked at 160-165F at the thickest point.
- ShalotBeeton's spelling of shallot. One teaspoonful minced is a small amount for four people, and it goes into the hot dish raw, so mince it very fine or its bite dominates.
- Mushroom-ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor, closer to Worcestershire sauce or a mushroom soy. It is still sold by British specialists; a tablespoon of Worcestershire plus a tablespoon of dark soy is a reasonable stand-in for the two tablespoons here.
- DrippingRendered beef or pork fat, saved from roasting and reused. Any high-smoke-point fat works; lard or clarified butter gives the closest flavour and browning.
- Blades of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold in whole "blades" and pounded in a mortar. Two blades pounded come to somewhere between a quarter and half a teaspoon of ground mace; grated nutmeg at rather less than that quantity is the nearest substitute.
- Dried mushroomsThree dried mushrooms means three whole caps, probably field mushrooms dried on strings. Use about half an ounce of dried ceps or a small handful of dried field mushrooms, and add their soaking water to the pint of liquid rather than throwing it away.
- Two glasses of sherryA wine glass of the period is around 2 to 2.5 fl oz, so figure on 4-5 fl oz total. With a pint of water that gives a thin, brothy sauce; two teaspoons of flour will barely thicken it, so expect a light gravy rather than a coating one.
- "Until three parts done"Cook the buttered joints for roughly three-quarters of their total time before the liquid goes in, colouring them lightly in the butter. Watch the heat: a quarter pound of butter in a stewpan will brown and then burn well before the rabbit is ready.
- Arranged pyramidicallyThe joints are piled up on the hot dish over the butter, shallot and ketchup, which melt into a dressing underneath. Warm the serving dish thoroughly or the butter simply sits there in lumps.
- Seasonable September to FebruaryThis is the wild rabbit season, autumn and winter being when wild rabbits were reckoned to be in best condition. Farmed rabbit is available year round and is milder and fatter than the wild kind Beeton had in mind.
Rabbit was the cheap meat of Victorian Britain. At 1s. 8d. for a dish feeding four or five, this is one of the more economical entries in Beeton, and the household books of the period treat rabbit much as later cooks treated chicken: plain-boiled with onion sauce, curried, potted, made into pies, or, as here, jointed and fried. Wild rabbits came into town by the hamper from the countryside and were sold by hawkers and poulterers through the autumn and winter; a warren was a genuine asset on an estate. The finishing touch of butter, shallot and mushroom ketchup laid in the bottom of a hot dish belongs to an older English habit of dressing plainly cooked meat in the serving dish rather than making a separate sauce, and mushroom ketchup itself was a store-cupboard staple long before tomato ketchup displaced the name. À la minute is the standard kitchen phrase for something cooked to order rather than held on the stove, though the thirty-five minutes here stretches the claim somewhat.