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To Roast Rabbits
513. Rabbits are roasted exactly like hare, but, being smaller, they require less time. They also ought not to be soaked in water, but washed as directed for hare. From thirty to forty minutes will roast any wild rabbit. Large tame rabbits will take as long as a hare.
A cross-reference entry rather than a standalone method: it assumes you have the book's hare instructions to hand, which means barding, a forcemeat stuffing sewn into the belly, constant basting and a gravy made from the drippings. The points below fill in what the shorthand leaves out.
- The hinge: fatRabbit has almost no intramuscular fat and dries out easily. Bard the saddle and hind legs with bacon or thin sheets of pork fat tied on with string, and baste every ten minutes.
- Oven temperatureVictorian roasting was done at a brisk open fire. In an oven, 400F for a wild rabbit gets colour on the outside within the short cooking window; a large tame rabbit does better started at 425F for 15 minutes and dropped to 350F.
- Timing and donenessThirty to forty minutes is right for a wild rabbit of 2-2.5 lb. Check the thickest part of the hind leg at 160-165F; rabbit is safe cooked through and should not be served pink, but every minute past that costs moisture.
- Tame versus wildFarmed rabbit today runs 3-4 lb dressed and is fatter, milder and more tender than a wild one. Allow 50-60 minutes.
- Why no soakingSoaking in water was commonly done with strong-flavoured game and to draw blood from a hung hare. Rabbit is mild enough not to need it, and water waterlogs the thin flesh. Wipe out the cavity and pat dry instead.
- StuffingPeriod hare forcemeats are generally breadcrumb-and-suet mixtures with herbs and lemon peel, sewn in. If the book's hare method calls for one and you use it, add 10 minutes to the time and check that the stuffing itself reaches 165F.
- GravyDeglaze the roasting tin with stock and a spoonful of port or red wine; redcurrant jelly is the classic period accompaniment to hare, and is often served with rabbit too.
- YieldOne wild rabbit serves two; a large farmed rabbit serves three, or four if it is stuffed.
Rabbit was the everyday meat of the British game economy, cheap enough in the nineteenth century to be a staple of working households as well as a country-house dish, and cookbooks of the period routinely treat it as the poor relation of hare, defined by what it is not. The distinction the entry draws between wild and tame animals mattered a great deal then: warren rabbits and hutch-raised ones differed sharply in size, fat and flavour, and a cook needed to know which was on the block before deciding on a time. Hare, being darker, stronger and traditionally hung, got the elaborate treatment with soaking, forcemeat and its own sauce, while rabbit borrowed the method wholesale. British rabbit-eating fell away sharply after myxomatosis reached the country in the 1950s, and the meat has never fully returned to the ordinary table.