Rabbit Pie
INGREDIENTS for medium-sized pie.-1 rabbit, a few slices of ham or bacon, salt and white pepper to taste, 2 blades of pounded mace,½ teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, a few forcemeat balls, 2 hard-boiled eggs, 1/2 pint of gravy, puffcrust. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d. Cut up the rabbit (which should be young), remove the breast-bone and bone the legs. Put the rabbit, slices of ham, forcemeat balls and hard-boiled eggs, by turns, in layers, and season each layer with pepper, salt, pounded mace and grated nutmeg. Pour in about pint of water, cover RABBIT, ROAST. with crust, and bake in a well-heated oven for about 1½ hour. Should the crust acquire too much colour, place a piece of paper over it to prevent it from burning. When done, pour in at the top, by means of the hole in the middle of the crust, a little good gravy, RABBIT PIE. which may be made of the breast and leg bones of the rabbit and 2 or 3 shank-bones, flavoured with onion, herbs and spices.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE from September to February.
Note. The liver of the rabbit may be boiled, minced and mixed with the forcemeat balls, when the flavour is liked.
Rabbit or Hare, Ragoût of.- INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 persons.-1 rabbit, 3 teaspoonfuls of flour, 3 sliced onions, 2 oz. of butter, a few thin slices of bacon, pepper and salt to taste, 2 slices of lemon, 1 bay-leaf, 1 glass of port wine.
AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Slice the onions, and put them into a stewpan with the flour and butter; place the pan near the fire, stir well as the butter melts, till the onions become a rich brown colour, and add, by degrees, a little water or gravy till the mixture is of the consistency of cream. Cut some thin slices of bacon; lay in these, with the rabbit, cut into neat joints; add a seasoning of pepper and salt, the lemon and bayleaf, and let the whole simmer until tender. Pour in the port wine, give one boil, and serve.
TIME. - About hour to simmer the rabbit.
SEASONABLE from September to February.
Two rabbit dishes from Beeton, both assuming a butcher who will sell you a whole young rabbit and a cook who knows what forcemeat is. The pie is straightforward once you sort out the garbled quantities and times in the printed text.
- The text is internally inconsistentThe method says bake "about 1½ hour" while the TIME line says 1 hour. For a medium pie of jointed rabbit under puff pastry, plan on about 1½ hours total. The ragoût gives no simmering time at all beyond a dropped fraction; farmed rabbit joints need roughly 45 minutes to an hour to become tender.
- "About pint of water"A fraction has been lost in printing here, as it has elsewhere in this entry. Half a pint (10 fl oz imperial, about 1¼ cups) is the sensible reading — enough to keep the meat moist without flooding the pastry. The ½ pint of gravy in the ingredient list is separate; the text says only that "a little good gravy" goes in afterwards through the steam hole.
- A well-heated ovenNo temperature is given; in a modern oven a hot start of around 425F to set and lift the puff pastry, dropping to about 350F for the remainder, is a reasonable approximation. The instruction about laying paper over the crust is the period equivalent of a foil tent, and still the right move.
- The rabbit itself"Young" is all the text says; in practice that suggests a small animal, and farmed rabbit today runs to roughly 2½–3 lb. Wild rabbit in season is leaner, tougher and stronger flavoured; it wants the longer end of every time given here. Ask the butcher to joint it and reserve the bones for the gravy, which the last paragraph calls for explicitly.
- Blades of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold as whole "blades" or ground. Two pounded blades is roughly ¼ teaspoon of ground mace. With the ½ teaspoon of nutmeg it makes for a firmly spiced, distinctly Victorian pie.
- Forcemeat ballsBeeton assumes you already have her forcemeat: breadcrumbs, suet or butter, chopped bacon or ham, parsley, lemon zest, herbs and egg to bind. No size is given here. A good sausagemeat stuffing rolled into balls does the same job. The note about the minced boiled liver is worth taking if you have it.
- The gravy holeCut a vent in the centre of the lid before baking and add the hot gravy through it when the pie comes out, not before. Cold gravy poured into a hot pie will make the underside of the pastry sodden.
- A glass of portIn Victorian recipes a wine glass is roughly 2 to 2½ fl oz. Add it at the very end as directed and give it only one boil, or it turns harsh.
- YieldA "medium-sized pie" from one rabbit serves four; the ragoût is given for five, which is generous unless there is a good deal of bread and potato alongside.
Rabbit was a cheap meat in Victorian Britain, and this pie is costed at 2s 6d. The seasonable note of September to February reflects the wild season rather than any farmed supply. Layering meat with hard-boiled eggs and forcemeat balls under a crust is older than Beeton and is found in earlier English pies, where the eggs give a decorative cross-section when the pie is cut and the forcemeat stretches a small carcass. Pouring gravy in through a hole in the lid after baking may owe something to cold pies, where the liquid set to a jelly. The ragout, with its browned onion roux, bacon, bay, lemon and finishing glass of port, is the same animal treated in the French-influenced manner that mid-century English cookery books increasingly favoured.