No. 2138

Young Rabbits a la Thieblin

Lapereaux a la Thieblin

Skin, empty, and trim two young rabbits; put the livers aside, and divide each rabbit into twelve pieces; heat some oil and butter, half of each, in a sautoir, put in the pieces of rabbit, and season well with salt, pepper a crushed clove of garlic, and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf; fry them quickly, moisten with espagnole sauce (No.414), white wine, a little clear gravy (No.404), and tomatoes; let simmer till thoroughly cooked, and add the sauted livers, and some mushrooms. Dress the rabbit and mushrooms, covering over with the sauce. Prepare a rabbit forcemeat (No.84), mix with it a little espagnole sauce reduced and stirred with some half-glaze made of game fumet (No.397); place it in small oval molds and poach in the oven; cut them in two length ways, bread-crumb them first without any eggs, then again with eggs, and fry to a fine color in clarified butter; drain, wipe, and dress them around the rabbit. Serve separately an espagnole sauce (No.414) made with game fumet (No.397).

← No. 2137 Young Rabbit a la Celtoise Rabbit, Hare & Squirrel No. 2139 Young Rabbits, Valencia Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A restaurant dish built from Ranhofer's cross-referenced sauce system, so most of the work is in the components rather than the rabbit. Read it as a braise with a fried forcemeat garnish and it becomes manageable.

The sauces, plainlyEspagnole (No. 414) is a brown roux-thickened veal stock reduced with mirepoix and tomato; half-glaze is that sauce reduced further; the "clear gravy" (No. 404) is a plain brown stock. A good reduced brown stock, lightly thickened, stands in for all three without wrecking the dish. Game fumet (No. 397) is stock made from game trimmings and bones — rabbit bones and the forelegs will do.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a sauté pan with flared sides. Use a wide braiser or a 12-inch skillet with a lid, large enough to hold the pieces in one layer.
What "young rabbits" meansLapereaux are young rabbits, only a few months old and small, roughly 2 to 3 lb dressed. Farmed rabbit sold today is broadly comparable. An older wild rabbit or hare will need considerably longer simmering and coarser handling.
Twelve piecesTwo forelegs, two hind legs split at the joint, the saddle cut across into three or four, plus the ribcage sections and neck. Uneven pieces are expected; the thin rib pieces cook first and can be lifted out.
TimingBrown hard, then simmer covered 35 to 45 minutes for farmed rabbit — the meat should pull from the bone but not shred. Rabbit dries out badly if pushed past this point; keep the liquid at a bare tremble.
The liversSauté them separately in butter for a minute or two a side and add only at the end, as written. Cooked through the braise they turn grainy and muddy the sauce.
The forcemeat garnishRabbit forcemeat (No. 84) is boned rabbit pounded with panada and butter or cream, essentially a quenelle mixture. The recipe gives no oven temperature: poach the small oval molds in a water bath in a moderate oven until just set, chill firm, then split, and follow the two-stage crumbing exactly: dry crumbs first, then egg and crumbs again. The first dry layer helps seal the soft forcemeat so the egg wash does not soak in and burst the coating.
Frying mediumClarified butter is specified because whole butter's milk solids scorch at the temperature needed. Clarify it yourself or use ghee; hold it around 350F.
YieldTwo young rabbits with the forcemeat croquettes serve six as a main course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and the book's habit of attaching a proper name to a garnish — à la Thieblin here — reflects the kitchen practice of the period, where a regular customer, a colleague or a public figure might be commemorated in a dish; many such names were current only within one house and have left no other trace. The construction is thoroughly French: rabbit braised in espagnole with white wine and tomato, then ringed with breaded, fried forcemeat shapes, a garnish style Ranhofer uses again and again to turn a homely animal into something that could be sent to a Delmonico's table. Rabbit was cheap and plentiful in nineteenth-century American markets, and the section it sits in — grouping rabbit with hare and squirrel — is a reminder that squirrel was still ordinary market game when the book was written.