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Jugged Rabbit
Clean a rabbit, disjoint it and cut the body into four pieces. Cut one-half pound of lean salt pork into small pieces, put them in a stewpan with one ounce of butter, and toss it over the fire until the butter has melted; then put in the pieces of rabbit, and fry them until lightly browned. Sprinkle over one tablespoonful of flour, pour in one-half pint each of claret and broth, add eight or ten small onions, a bunch of sweet herbs, a clove of garlic, and two or three cloves, and place the stewpan over the fire until the contents boil; then move it to the side, and allow them to simmer gently until the rabbit is tender. When cooked, place the pieces of rabbit on a hot dish, arrange the onions round them, strain the cooking liquor through a fine hair-sieve, and serve.
A straightforward red-wine rabbit braise despite the name; nothing here has to change much, but a few of Oscar's assumptions need spelling out.
- "Jugged" here is looseClassic jugging means sealing the meat in a covered jug or crock set in a pan of simmering water, and finishing the sauce with the animal's blood. This version is a plain stovetop braise in a stewpan, so no jug, no crock and no blood are required.
- Half a pint eachOne cup of claret and one cup of broth in American measure. Claret is simply dry red Bordeaux; any dry, medium-bodied red works. Two cups of liquid barely covers a jointed rabbit, which is intended — this is a braise, not a stew.
- Salt pork and saltHalf a pound of lean salt pork is a substantial amount of cured meat for one rabbit. Blanch it briefly if it is very salty, and add no salt to the pot until you have tasted the finished liquor. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon or pancetta is the closest easy substitute.
- Sweet herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied together, or bundled in cheesecloth with the cloves and garlic so they can be lifted out before straining.
- Cooking time depends on the rabbitA farmed rabbit of 2.5-3 lb is tender in about 45 minutes to an hour at a bare simmer. A wild rabbit or an older animal can take twice that. Test the saddle first — it dries out well before the hind legs give up.
- The strained liquor is thinOne tablespoon of flour in two cups of liquid gives a light sauce, not a gravy. After straining, reduce it for a few minutes over high heat; skim the fat rendered from the salt pork first, or the sauce will be greasy.
- Small onionsPearl or cipollini onions, peeled whole. Added at the start as written they may soften considerably; if you want them firm for the garnish, add them partway through the simmer.
- YieldOne rabbit, jointed as directed, serves three or four, with potatoes or noodles to take the sauce.
Rabbit was ordinary market meat in Oscar Tschirky's New York, sold by butchers and game dealers and cooked at every level of the trade. The word jugged descends from English cookery, where hare or rabbit was packed into a stoneware jug, stopped up and set in a kettle of boiling water so the meat cooked slowly in its own juices — Hannah Glasse's much-quoted eighteenth-century direction to "jug" a hare is the version usually cited. By the time Oscar's book appeared in 1896 the term was often applied to dark, wine-braised rabbit or hare dishes cooked without a jug at all, in a stewpan pushed to the cool side of the range. The claret and the sweet herbs mark it as the French-influenced cooking that American hotel kitchens of the period aspired to.