No. 2137

Young Rabbit a la Celtoise

Lapereau a la Celtoise

Divide a young rabbit into twelve pieces after skinning and drawing it; put these to steep in a raw marinade for six hours, then drain and wipe, lay the pieces in a sautoir with fat pork cut in half inch squares and blanched; set the sautoir on a good fire and fry the rabbit with the addition of some small onions and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf and a clove of garlic; when the meats are done, baste them over with white wine and some clear gravy (No.404), adding six peeled tomatoes cut across in two and the seeds well extracted, also half a pound of lean cooked ham cut in three-sixteenths inch squares and a pint of brown sauce (No.414). Remove the parsley, skim off the fat and season highly with salt, pepper and prepared red pepper (No.168); dress the rabbits inside a risot a la piemontese border (No. 2981), pour very little of the sauce over and serve.

← No. 2136 California Quails a la Monterey Rabbit, Hare & Squirrel No. 2138 Young Rabbits a la Thieblin →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a stocked sauce station, so most of the work here is in the cross-references. Substituting sensibly for those is the whole job.

The numbered saucesNo. 404 is a clear meat gravy: reduced, unthickened brown stock; a good low-sodium veal or chicken stock reduced by half will stand in. No. 414 is Ranhofer's brown sauce, his equivalent of an espagnole; a pint of any well-made demi-glace, thinned slightly, does the same work. No. 168 is his prepared red pepper — plain cayenne, added by the pinch, is the practical equivalent.
Raw marinadeA marinade crue means uncooked: typically oil, white wine or vinegar, sliced onion, carrot, herbs, peppercorns. Six hours is what the recipe calls for and is ample for young rabbit; long acid soaks are generally thought to spoil the texture.
SautoirA straight-sided, shallow pan with a lid — a modern sauté pan or a wide braiser. The shape matters: the twelve pieces should sit in one layer so they brown rather than steam.
Fat pork, blanchedSalt pork or unsmoked fatback cut in half-inch dice and dropped into boiling water for a few minutes to draw out excess salt. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon lardons are the closest supermarket substitute; skip the blanching if using unsalted pork belly.
The rabbit itselfA young rabbit means a fryer of roughly 2½ to 3 lb. Farmed rabbit at that weight is done in about 35 to 45 minutes of gentle simmering once the sauce goes in; anything older or wild needs an hour or more and will otherwise be stringy at the saddle.
Timing the browning"When the meats are done" is best read as the end of the initial fry: the rabbit coloured on all sides and the onions golden, not cooked through. The wine and gravy then go in and the pan finishes at a bare simmer, covered, on the stovetop; the recipe gives no oven stage.
TomatoesSix peeled tomatoes halved and seeded; medium summer fruit is what is wanted. Out of season, a tin of whole peeled tomatoes, drained and seeded, is better than pale fresh ones.
The risotto borderNo. 2981 is a Piedmontese risotto — rice cooked in stock with Parmesan — pressed into a ring mould and turned out onto the platter. A firm, well-cheesed risotto holds the shape; spoon it into a buttered ring, let it sit two minutes, then unmould.
Sauce disciplineSkim the fat properly before the final seasoning. There is rendered pork, rabbit fat and the fat carried in by the brown sauce, and the recipe specifies that only a little sauce is poured over the meat.
YieldTwelve pieces with ham, pork and a rice border serves four to six as a main course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written down — several thousand numbered entries designed to be read across, one recipe leaning on another. The name à la celtoise is one of the many geographic and quasi-geographic tags of nineteenth-century French menu-writing, apparently gesturing at Celtic France; like most such labels it signals a treatment rather than a documented regional origin. What the dish actually is, is a rabbit fricassée in the Provençal-Italian manner — pork, tomato, garlic, ham, a rice border — dressed up in Delmonico's house style. Rabbit was ordinary, widely sold meat in America in the 1890s, and much of Ranhofer's skill lay in making the ordinary look expensive: the brown sauce, the diced ham and the moulded risotto turn a cheap animal into a plated course.