No. 2141

Wild Rabbit Jugged with Blood

Civet de Lapin de Garenne au Sang

Procure a good, young, fleshy wild rabbit, preserve all the blood in a bowl, stirring into it a little vinegar to keep it liquid. Skin and prepare it, and cut it up into equal-sized pieces. Put the meats into a vessel to season and let marinate for two hours with a little boiled vinegar, a little white wine and a tied bunch of fresh and wild thyme. Chop up some fat pork, melt it in a frying pan and add to it half a pound of small squares of bacon; after these are well sized, remove them with a skimmer and add to the fat the well-drained pieces of rabbit and cut up onions; fry over a good fire until the meats are nicely browned and have evaporated their moisture, then put them into a fireproof stone vessel with a glassful of red wine; reduce this over a brisk fire and moisten the meats at once to their height with white wine and stock (No. 194a); let this liquid come to a boil, then remove the vessel on one side to boil gently until partly done; strain the liquid through a sieve, pare the surplus bones from the meats and return the latter to the saucepan with the cut up bacon, the marinade, a bunch of parsley and a peeled clove of garlic. Put the stew back on the fire and thicken it with a little cooked roux or diluted flour, finish cooking slowly. A few moments before serving, transfer all the pieces of rabbit and bacon into another saucepan, strain the sauce over and boil up once or twice thickening it off the fire with the reserved blood; let cook again but without boiling. Dress the stew on a dish and surround it with small clusters of onions glazed separately, if intended for a more ceremonious dish, a few clusters of fresh, peeled mushrooms cooked in butter may be added.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A classic French civet, in which the reserved blood is used as the final liaison. Everything else in the dish is ordinary braising; the last ninety seconds are where it succeeds or fails.

The hinge: never let it boil after the blood goes inBlood proteins set like egg somewhere around 160-170F. Pull the pan off the heat, whisk in the blood slackened with a ladle of the hot sauce, then return it only long enough to thicken and gloss. Let it come to a bubble and the sauce breaks into brown grit.
Getting the blood at allRabbit is not generally sold with its blood. Ask a butcher who supplies Filipino, Caribbean or Polish customers for fresh or frozen pig's blood, a common substitute. The vinegar in the original acts as an anticoagulant; without it the blood clots and will not work as a liaison.
Wild rabbit and tularemiaTularemia is carried by wild rabbits and hares in North America and is contracted mainly through cuts on the hands during skinning and gutting, not through eating cooked meat. Wear gloves when butchering, avoid animals that seemed sluggish or sick, and cook the meat through. The same caution applies to the raw blood.
"A fireproof stone vessel"An earthenware or stoneware braising pot. A heavy enamelled cast-iron Dutch oven does the same job.
Stock No. 194aRanhofer's cross-reference is to one of his stocks. Any light chicken or veal stock works; the rabbit's own bones and forequarters, browned, make a better one.
"Fat pork" and the baconFresh unsmoked pork fatback or salt pork, diced and rendered, not bacon. The half-pound of lardons can be blanched first if you use modern heavily cured, heavily smoked bacon.
Timing and quantityA wild rabbit of 2 to 3 lb serves three; farmed rabbit runs 3 to 4 lb and serves four. Wild animals need 1 1/2 to 2 hours of gentle braising, farmed closer to 50 minutes. The recipe asks only for a gentle boil and slow finish: hold the liquid at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, or the loin shreds before the legs give up.
The garnishGlazed pearl onions and buttered mushrooms are the standard garniture bourguignonne, cooked separately so their liquid never thins the sauce. Add them at the table, not to the pot.

A Little History

Civet is generally said to take its name from cive, the old French word for chive or onion, and the dish is defined by two things: a heavy onion presence and a sauce finished with the animal's own blood. It belongs to the same family as civet de lièvre, jugged hare, and the English "jugged" of the title is usually explained by the older practice of stewing the sectioned animal in a tall covered jar set in a water bath. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, was writing for a kitchen that handled whole game. The blood liaison is now largely confined to French and Iberian home cooking and to restaurants that butcher whole animals.