Home › To Fricassee Rabbits › To Fricassee Rabbits
To Fricassee Rabbits
517. WHITE.-Blanch your rabbits by putting them into boiling water and boiling them for six or seven minutes; when cold cut them up as boiling them for six or seven minutes; when cold cut them up as for eating, and put them into a stewpan, with a pint of veal or other light-coloured stock; flavour with cucumber, ketchup, or lemon pickle. 518. BROWN.-Cut your rabbits into joints, fry them of a light brown in butter, and then put them in a stewpan with a pint of water, a large spoonful of mushroom ketchup, the same of browning, a tea-spoonful of lemon juice or pickle, a little essence of anchovy, a little lemon peel, and cayenne and salt to taste. Thicken and strain the gravy, and pour it over the rabbits before serving.
Two versions of the same dish: a pale fricassee built on light stock and a brown one built on fried butter and ketchup. Neither gives a stewing time, and that is the number you need most.
- TimingA whole rabbit cut into joints needs 45 minutes to an hour of gentle simmering, covered, until the meat pulls from the bone. Farmed rabbit is at the shorter end; wild rabbit and older animals want the full hour or more.
- Keep it below a boilRabbit is very lean and turns dry and stringy at a rolling boil. Hold the liquid at a bare tremble for both versions.
- QuantitiesA pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz, roughly 2 1/2 US cups. One pint of stock or water will just cover the joints of a single rabbit of about 2 1/2 to 3 lb, which serves three to four.
- Blanching the white versionThe six or seven minutes in boiling water sets the surface and draws out blood so the sauce stays pale. It is not the cooking; the stewing that follows is.
- Finishing the white sauceA white fricassee was normally finished off the heat with cream and egg yolks, or with a butter-and-flour liaison, and seasoned with a little nutmeg. As printed, the sauce is left thin.
- Lemon pickle and browningLemon pickle was sliced lemons salted and steeped with spices in vinegar, the strained liquor being what most recipes call for; a strip of preserved lemon plus a squeeze of juice stands in. "Browning" was burnt or caramelised sugar sold for colouring gravy; a teaspoon of dark caramel or a little gravy browning does the same, adding colour and a faint caramel edge.
- Essence of anchovySold bottled in the period, close to anchovy paste thinned with vinegar. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste or a splash of colatura is enough; it should read as depth, not as fish.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor, not tomato ketchup. Mushroom ketchup is still made; failing that use a spoonful of soy or Worcestershire and cut back on the added salt.
- StrainingLift the joints out before you thicken and strain, then return them to the strained sauce off the heat so they warm through without shredding.
Fricassee came into English cookery from France, the word appearing in English print by the later sixteenth century and recipes becoming common through the seventeenth; by the Victorian period it had settled into this pair of options, white and brown, applied to chicken, veal or rabbit more or less interchangeably. Rabbit was the cheap partner in that trio: bought from the poulterer or the warrener, or shot on the estate, it was the meat a household turned to when fowl was dear. The seasonings here are nineteenth-century English store-cupboard work -- lemon pickle, mushroom ketchup, essence of anchovy, browning -- bottled preparations a cook was more likely to buy than make, and all doing the job that stock reductions do in a modern kitchen: putting savour and colour into a lean, mild meat in a hurry.