No. 2140

Young Rabbits, Hunter's Style

Lapereaux au Chasseur

Skin and draw two young rabbits; wash, wipe, and cut each one into twelve pieces; put them into a sautoir on a brisk fire to fry and color the meats lightly, adding half a pound of raw ham cut in one-eight of an inch squares, four ounces of onions cut exactly the same size, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf, garlic, and a clove. Drain off the fat, and season with salt and pepper, putting in a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414), and as much Burgundy wine; simmer, reduce, and add a pint of cooked minced mushrooms and half as many truffles. Dish it up and garnish with the mushrooms and truffles, pour a third of the sauce over, and range croutons of bread fried in butter all around; serve the remainder of the sauce in a sauce boat.

← No. 2139 Young Rabbits, Valencia Style Rabbit, Hare & Squirrel No. 2141 Wild Rabbit Jugged with Blood →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional brigade with espagnole already on the stove and gives no times or temperatures at all. The gaps are worth filling before you start.

The sauce is the projectEspagnole (No. 414 in the same book) is a brown stock thickened with brown roux and cooked down with a mirepoix over several hours; formulas vary in whether tomato appears. A good reduced brown veal or chicken stock, lightly thickened, stands in; a jarred "demi-glace" concentrate will read as salty rather than deep.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold twenty-four pieces in one layer without crowding. Two pans are better than piling the rabbit up, since the browning is the only colour the dish gets.
Raw hamNot fresh pork. This is unsmoked dry-cured ham of the prosciutto or jambon de Bayonne type, cut in even 1/8-inch dice. Half a pound is a lot of salt entering the pan, so hold back on seasoning until the sauce has reduced.
The rabbitsLapereaux are young rabbits, perhaps 2 to 2.5 lb each dressed; farmed rabbit at that weight is the closest thing sold today. Ranhofer does not say how to divide them; one way to reach twelve pieces is legs jointed at thigh and drumstick, shoulders whole, saddle cut across into three or four, plus the rib section.
Timing, which the original omitsAfter the wine and sauce go in, young rabbit needs about 35 to 45 minutes at a bare simmer. The forelegs and saddle finish first; pull the saddle pieces early and return them at the end, or they turn dry and stringy while the hind legs come good.
Wine"As much Burgundy" means a pint of red wine to a pint of sauce, a high proportion that must be simmered down hard or the dish tastes raw and sharp. Any dry medium-bodied red pinot noir works.
Mushrooms and trufflesA pint of cooked minced mushrooms is a large quantity roughly 1.5 lb raw, cooked down. Half as much truffle is a luxury few will match; a few grams of fresh black truffle shaved in off the heat at the end, or a spoonful of truffle peelings, gives the intended perfume without the expense.
CroutonsHeart-shaped or triangular slices of firm white bread fried in clarified butter until crisp. Fry them at the last moment and set them around the platter rather than in the sauce, or they collapse.
YieldTwo young rabbits with this garnish serve six to eight as a main course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894, during a career at Delmonico's in New York that ran to roughly three decades with an interruption, and the book reads as what it is: a French chef's working repertory transcribed for an American audience, mother sauces and all. Au chasseur, hunter's style, generally denotes mushrooms, shallot or onion, and wine in a brown sauce, and it attaches to rabbit, chicken and veal alike; the name nods at game rather than describing any particular hunt. The chapter groups rabbit, hare and squirrel together, and the distinction between lapereaux and older or wild animals mattered more then than now, when farmed rabbit dominates. So does the raw ham: dicing cured pork into the pan to lend fat and salt to lean game meat is a long-standing French practice that carried over into the grand restaurant kitchen, only cut smaller and more neatly.