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Fowl, Duck, Game, Hare: Rabbit
No. 151. Coniglio alla Provenzale (Rabbit) Ingredients: Rabbit, flour, butter, stock, Chablis, parsley, onion, spice, mushrooms.
Cut up a rabbit, wipe the pieces, flour them over, and fry them in butter until they are coloured all over. Then pour a glass of Chablis over them, add some chopped parsley, half an onion, three mushrooms, salt, and a cup of good stock. Cover the stewpan and cook on moderate fire for about threequarters of an hour. Should the stew get too dry, add a spoonful of stock occasionally. a No. 152. Coniglio arrostito alla Corradino (Roast Rabbit) Ingredients: Rabbit, pig's fry, butter, salt, pepper, fennel, bay leaf, onions. Make a stuffing of pig's fry (previously cooked in butter), salt, pepper, fennel, an onion, all chopped up, and a bay leaf. With this stuff a rabbit and braize it for half an hour, then roast it before a brisk fire and baste it well with good gravy. If you like, put in a clove of garlic with one cut whilst it is being braized, but only leave it in for five minutes. Serve with ham sauce (Salsa di Proscuitto, No. 7.) A fowl may be cooked in this way.
No. 153. Coniglio in salsa Piccante (Rabbit) Ingredients: Rabbit, butter, flour, celery, parsley, onion, carrot, mushrooms, cloves, spices, Burgundy, stock, capers, anchovies.
Cut up a rabbit, wipe the pieces well on a dishcloth, flour them over and put them into a frying-pan with two ounces of butter and fry for about ten minutes. Then add half a stick of celery, parsley, an onion, half a carrot, and three mushrooms, all cut up, three cloves, a pinch of spice and salt, a glass of Burgundy, and the same quantity of stock; cover the stewpan and cook for half an hour, then put the pieces of rabbit into another stewpan and pass the liquor through a sieve; press it well with a wooden spoon, so as to get as much through as possible, pour this over the rabbit and add four capers and an anchovy in brine pounded in a mortar, mix all well together, let it simmer for a few minutes, then serve hot with a garnish of croûtons fried in butter.
VEGETABLES No. 154. Asparagi alla salsa Suprema (Asparagus) Ingredients :
Asparagus, butter, nutmeg, salt, suprême sauce (No. 16), gravy, lemon, Parmesan.
Cut some asparagus into pieces about an inch long and cook them in boiling water with salt, then drain and put them into a sauté pan with one and a half ounce of melted butter and sautez for a few minutes, but first add salt, a pinch of nutmeg, and a dust of grated cheese. Pour little suprême sauce over them, and at the last add a little gravy, one ounce of fresh butter, and a squeeze of lemon juice. a No. 155. Cavoli di Bruxelles alla Savoiarda (Brussels Sprouts) Ingredients: Brussels sprouts, butter, pepper, stock, Béchamel sauce, Parmesan, croûtons.
Take off the outside leaves of half a pound of Brussels sprouts, wash and boil them in salted water. Let them get cool, drain, and put them in a pie-dish with two ounces of fresh butter, a quarter pint of very good stock, a little pepper, and a dust of grated Parmesan. When they are well glazed over, pour off the sauce, season with three tablespoonsful of boiling Béchamel sauce (No. 3), and serve with croûtons fried in butter.
Five short recipes from a book that assumes a cook who already knows how to joint a rabbit and keeps stock and a few mother sauces to hand. The main adjustments are to the rabbit itself, the vanished cuts, and the vague quantities.
- Which rabbitA farmed rabbit of 2.5-3 lb is what these timings suit: three-quarters of an hour jointed and simmered will leave it tender. A wild rabbit is leaner and tougher and wants closer to an hour and a half, with more liquid added along the way.
- Pig's fryIn No. 152 this means the pluck of a pig sold together as offal: liver, lights (lungs), heart, and sometimes sweetbread and caul fat. Lungs cannot be sold for food in the United States and are hard to obtain in many other places. Pig's liver alone, or liver with heart, gives the same effect in a stuffing.
- Braize, then roastNo. 152 is a two-stage method: half an hour covered with a little liquid and fat to set the stuffing and start the meat, then finished at high heat for colour. A spit before a brisk fire corresponds to roughly 425F in an oven, basting frequently; the rabbit is done at 160F in the thickest part of the thigh.
- "Three mushrooms"Read this as about 3 oz, sliced. Add them with the wine rather than earlier, or they will give up their water into the frying butter and stop the rabbit browning.
- A glass of wineTake a glass as something like 4 fl oz, half a cup; the book does not define it. Chablis in No. 151 and Burgundy in No. 153 are doing different jobs: the first keeps the sauce pale and sharp, the second is there to be reduced and darkened. Any dry white and any medium-bodied dry red will stand in.
- Anchovy and capersAn anchovy in brine, pounded, is saltier than a modern oil-packed fillet; rinse it and taste before adding further salt. Four capers is not a misprint for a spoonful — the piquancy in No. 153 is meant to be a background note, not a puttanesca.
- Sieving the sauceThe hinge of No. 153. Pressing the vegetables through a sieve with a wooden spoon is what thickens and binds the sauce; a modern blender changes the texture entirely. Use a conical strainer and press hard, then return the rabbit to the strained liquor and, as the recipe says, let it simmer only a few minutes once the anchovy and capers are in.
- The vegetable dishesNo. 154 wants asparagus boiled just until it bends, then briefly tossed in butter; overcooked pieces will fall apart in the sauté pan. No. 155 is really a glazing: the sprouts sit in stock and butter in a shallow dish over heat until the liquid is nearly gone, and half a pound serves two.
- YieldEach rabbit recipe serves three to four. The book gives no numbers.
The Cook's Decameron (1901), compiled by Mrs W. G. Waters, dressed a collection of Italian recipes in a Boccaccian frame: a house party kept indoors by bad weather, telling ten days of dishes rather than tales. The French leanings are on the surface here — alla Provenzale points across to Provence, and both stews are wetted with named French wines, Chablis and Burgundy. Rabbit was cheap protein across the whole peninsula and much of Britain, farmed in hutches or shot in the fields, and it appears in period cookbooks with a casualness that no longer holds. The name alla Corradino in No. 152 is the kind of dedicatory tag attached to dishes; no origin for it is documented.