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Broiled Rabbits
Skin, clean, wipe dry, split down the back and pound flat; then wrap in well-buttered letter paper, place them on a buttered gridiron and broil over a clear, brisk fire, turning them often. When cooked serve on a hot platter seasoning them with plenty of salt, pepper and butter, turning them over and over so that they will take up the butter.
A straightforward split-and-grill method that depends on very young rabbits and steady, even heat. Two details need translating: the paper wrapper and the fire.
- Only young rabbits will workBroiling suits young rabbits, generally something in the range of two to three pounds dressed. An older animal cooked this way tends to turn dry and stringy and is better braised or stewed. The recipe itself specifies neither age nor size.
- "Letter paper"Plain unglazed writing paper, buttered heavily so it would not char through. Use parchment paper today. Do not substitute waxed paper, which melts, or foil, which steams rather than allowing the surface to dry and colour.
- The gridiron and the fireA hinged grill basket over charcoal is the closest modern equivalent, and it makes the frequent turning the recipe calls for far easier. "A clear, brisk fire" means coals burned down past flame to an even glow, hot enough to hold a hand over for two or three seconds.
- Split and poundSplitting down the back and flattening is the same principle as spatchcocking a chicken: it brings the whole carcass to a single thickness so the legs and saddle finish together. Press firmly with the flat of a cleaver rather than hammering, or the thin rib bones will splinter.
- Timing and donenessFigure 20 to 30 minutes total, turning every few minutes, and unwrap for the last few so the surface browns. Rabbit is very lean and goes from done to dry quickly; cook to 160F at the thickest part of the thigh and pull it off.
- Handling wild rabbitIf the animal is wild rather than farmed, wear gloves while skinning and cleaning it and wash everything afterwards. Tularemia is transmitted through contact with the raw carcass, not through the cooked meat, so the risk is in the dressing rather than the eating.
- Basting at the tableThe final turning in butter on the hot platter is doing real work here, not just garnishing. Lean rabbit has no fat of its own to carry seasoning, so use more butter than feels reasonable and salt it while it is still hot.
- YieldOne broiled rabbit of this size serves two.
Rabbit sat in the game chapter of American cookbooks well into the twentieth century, alongside squirrel, venison and wild fowl, because it was still something a household was as likely to be given as to buy. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book in the same practical spirit: a compendium for a middle-class housekeeper who might be handed a brace of rabbits and need to know what to do with them. Wrapping meat in buttered paper before broiling was a standard nineteenth-century technique, a relative of cooking en papillote rather than an ancestor of it, used to keep a lean cut from scorching over open coals when there was no way to regulate the fire beyond raking it. The instruction to broil only after splitting and flattening marks these as young rabbits; older ones went into the pot, and something like the distinction between a "broiler" and a "stewer" seems to have applied to rabbits as it did to chickens.