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Rabbits, Stewed in Milk
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 or 7 persons.very young rabbits, not nearly half grown; 1½ pint of milk, 1 blade of mace, 1 dessertspoonful of flour, a little salt and cayenne. AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Mix the flour very smoothly with 4 tablespoonfuls of the milk, and, when this is well mixed, add the remainder. Cut up the rabbits into joints, put them into a stewpan, with the milk and other ingredients, and simmer them very gently until quite tender. Stir the contents from time to keep the milk smooth and prevent it from burning. 1/2 hour will be sufficient for the cooking of this dish.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE from September to February.
Rabbits, To Carve. In carving a boiled rabbit, let the knife be drawn on each side of the backbone, the whole length BOILED RABBIT.
H of the rabbit, as shown by the dotted line B to A; thus the rabbit will be in three parts. Now let the back be divided into two equal parts, in the direction of the line from C to D; then let the leg be taken off, as shown by the line E to F, and the shoulder, as shown by the line G to H.
This, in our opinion, is the best plan to carve a rabbit, although there are other modes which are preferred by some.
A roast rabbit is rather differently trussed from one that is meant to be boiled; but the carving is nearly similar, as will be seen by the cut. The back should be ROAST RABBIA. divided into as many pieces as it will give, and the legs and shoulders can then be disengaged in the same manner as those of the boiled animal.
RAISED PIE.
Raised Biscuits. (American Recipe.)-INGREDIENTS for large breakfast dish.-1 quart of milk, cup of lard, cup of yeast, 2 tablespoonfuls of white sugar, 1 teaspoonful of salt, flour to make a soft dough. AVERAGE COST, 10d.
Mix the ingredients over night, melting the lard and slightly warming the milk.
In the morning, roll out the dough thick, and form into cakes. Put these into a baking-pan, and when they have risen for 20 minutes, bake them for another 20 minutes or 1/2 hour.
TIME.-40 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain white stew that depends entirely on the age of the rabbit: the milk is barely thickened and there is nothing to disguise tough meat.
- The hinge: use young rabbitMrs Beeton's "not nearly half grown" means a very young wild or farmed rabbit that will be tender in half an hour. A full-grown supermarket rabbit or an older wild one will still be sinewy after that time and needs 1 to 1½ hours of gentle simmering, or braising in stock rather than milk.
- Quantity of rabbitThe number of rabbits has dropped out of the ingredient list. For six or seven people, reckon on two small rabbits of about 1 to 1½ lb dressed weight each, or one 2½-3 lb farmed rabbit jointed.
- Milk measure1½ pint imperial is 30 fl oz, about 850 ml or roughly 3½ US cups. It should just cover the joints in the pan; add a little more if it does not.
- StewpanA "stewpan" is a wide, heavy saucepan with a lid, not a casserole dish for the oven. The whole dish is cooked on the hob.
- Keeping the milk from catchingMilk thickened with only a dessertspoonful of flour scorches easily. Keep the heat low enough that the surface only shivers, use the heaviest pan you have, and stir up from the base every few minutes as instructed.
- MaceA blade of mace is one piece of the dried outer casing of nutmeg; remove it before serving. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace or a light grating of nutmeg substitutes acceptably.
- Seasoning and finishingSalt and cayenne alone give a very pale, mild result. A strip of lemon peel, a bay leaf or a spoonful of chopped parsley stirred in at the end is a reasonable addition and lifts it, though the recipe as printed calls for none of them.
- YieldAs written it serves six or seven only as one dish among several, in the Victorian manner. As a main course with potatoes it will stretch to four.
Rabbit was the cheap meat of the Victorian kitchen — the average cost of two shillings here is for a dish meant to feed six or seven — and Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management and its later abridgements carry a long run of rabbit recipes: boiled, roasted, curried, potted, made into pies. Stewing in milk belongs to a family of deliberately pale, delicate preparations for young meat and poultry, akin to the boiled rabbit that the carving note on this same page describes. The seasonal note, September to February, is the season traditionally given for wild rabbit; farmed rabbit, now the usual sort in butchers' shops, is available all year.