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Rabbit Pie
After the rabbits have been thoroughly cleaned and washed, divide into conveniently sized pieces, cutting each back into three parts. Immerse in salted water for a half hour, remove, wipe dry, and then rub with lemon juice, salt and pepper. In case the rabbit is very plump, gash the thickest part several times allowing the seasoning to penetrate. Proceed as in game pie.
A preparation note rather than a full recipe: it tells you how to butcher and season the rabbit, then hands you off to the book's game pie method. Everything that matters here happens before the pastry goes on.
- The hinge: rabbit is extremely leanThere is almost no fat on a rabbit, and a pie baked long enough to tenderise the legs will dry the saddle to string. Line the dish with bacon or salt pork, or brown the pieces and braise them in stock until the meat loosens from the bone before assembling the pie.
- Wild or farmedIn 1911 a rabbit sold in the market was likely to be wild, and could be a year or more old, which suits the long, moist cooking a pie filling implies. A farmed rabbit of 2.5 to 3 lb is young and tender and needs considerably less time; treat it more like a chicken.
- Cutting it upTwo front legs, two hind legs, and the back cut crosswise into three sections gives seven pieces plus the ribs and flaps, which are worth simmering for stock. A cleaver or heavy knife makes short work of the backbone; light shears will struggle.
- The salt-water soakHalf an hour in salted water was a common recommendation for game, partly to draw out blood and partly to soften a strong flavour. It is optional with farmed rabbit; with a wild one it still does some good. Dry the pieces well afterward or they will not brown.
- Handling wild rabbitWild rabbits can carry tularemia, which is contracted through cuts in the skin while dressing the animal, not through eating cooked meat. Wear gloves for the butchering and washing, and wash everything the raw meat touched. The cooked pie is not the risk.
- OvenIf the game pie referred to is a pastry-topped dish, a modern approach would be to start hot, around 425F, for 15 minutes to set and colour the crust, then drop to 350F for the rest. With a filling that has been cooked first, the bake need only be long enough to finish the pastry. No temperature is given in the original.
- SeasoningLemon juice, salt and pepper is a spare list by modern taste. Thyme, a bay leaf, and a little mace or allspice in the gravy are all period-appropriate and make a better pie.
- YieldOne rabbit fills a 9-inch pie dish and serves three to four. Two rabbits, as the plural in the original implies, will fill a large deep dish for six to eight.
Rabbit pie belonged to both ends of the table: a staple of English cottage cooking, where a rabbit cost nothing but the trouble of catching it, and a fixture of the game larder in more prosperous houses. Its place in the Butterick book, published in 1911 for a broad American readership, reflects a period when wild rabbit and hare were still ordinary market goods in the United States. The instruction to soak in salted water and rub with lemon is characteristic of turn-of-the-century game cookery, which treated wild meat as needing to be tamed before it was cooked. Domestic rabbit farming expanded in America somewhat later, notably around the food shortages of the two world wars, after which the wild bird-and-beast assumptions of a recipe like this one gradually stopped applying.