No. 2143

Fillets of Young Rabbits a la Bienvenu, Garnished with Croquettes

Filets de Lapereaux a la Bienvenu, Garnis de Croquettes

Remove and lard both the fillets and minion fillets from four young rabbits, having the lardons exceedingly small (No. 4, Fig. 52); place them in a saute pan with clarified butter, place on a brisk fire, let cook and drain off the butter, detaching the glaze with a little white wine. Dress them in the center of a dish and serve with a separate marinade sauce (No. 496), garnishing around with prepared croquettes as follows:

Hare Croquettes.—Fry colorless in butter, one ounce of finely chopped onions adding four ounces of chopped mushrooms and eight ounces of cold roast rabbit taken from the legs and shoulders, mix with a well reduced brown sauce (No. 414), also a little meat glaze (No. 402) and fresh butter, add salt, pepper and chopped parsley; when this preparation is cold divide it into inch and a half balls, flatten them to three-quarters of an inch thick, dip in eggs, roll in bread-crumbs and fry to a fine golden color; drain, wipe and lay them around the dressed rabbit, resting one against the other; serve with the sauce as explained above.

← No. 2142 Young Rabbit Roasted and Larded Rabbit, Hare & Squirrel No. 2144 Fillets of Young Rabbits a la Lavoisier →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's game course in two parts: quick-cooked larded rabbit loins, and croquettes built from the tougher legs and shoulders of an earlier roast. The whole thing depends on the fillets not overcooking and the croquette mixture being properly cold.

The hinge: the fillets cook in minutesRabbit loin is lean and small — a strip roughly 5 to 6 inches long and well under an inch thick. In hot clarified butter it needs only a few minutes total, turning once. Prolonged cooking, which "let cook" might seem to invite, leaves it dry and cottony.
What the cuts areThe "fillets" are the two loin strips along the backbone; the "minion fillets" (filets mignons) are the small tenderloins tucked underneath. Four young rabbits therefore yield sixteen pieces of very modest size — a first course for six to eight, not a main dish.
Larding, and the modern alternativeLarding means threading fine strips of chilled pork fatback through the meat with a larding needle; Ranhofer cites his Fig. 52, No. 4 for the size of lardon, calling for them "exceedingly small." Without a needle, wrap each fillet in a thin sheet of fatback or unsmoked streaky bacon and tie it. The point is fat in lean meat, not decoration.
"Lapereau" means young rabbitA lapereau is a young rabbit, generally understood as an animal of a few months and a few pounds dressed. Farmed rabbit sold today is roughly comparable. Older wild rabbit or hare has firmer, darker loin and will not take kindly to the fast saute.
Deglazing"Detaching the glaze with a little white wine" is deglazing the pan — pour off the butter first so the wine lifts the browned residue rather than making a broken emulsion. A couple of tablespoons is enough; it is a pan glaze for the meat, not the sauce.
The three cross-referencesNo. 496 marinade sauce is Ranhofer's sharp game sauce built on a marinade with vinegar and aromatic vegetables; check his own entry rather than assuming a particular classical formula. No. 414 is Ranhofer's brown sauce, close to espagnole; a good reduced demi-glace stands in. No. 402 meat glaze is glace de viande, stock reduced to syrup — a spoonful of concentrated veal or chicken stock reduction, or commercial demi-glace paste, does the job.
"Fry colorless"Sweat the onions in butter over low heat so they soften without taking on any color. Browning here would push the croquette filling toward a coarser, roastier flavor than the dish wants.
Croquettes: chill hardThe mixture must be genuinely cold and stiff before shaping — spread it in a shallow tray and refrigerate at least two hours. Shape into balls about 1 1/2 inches, flatten to 3/4 inch, then bread and fry at 350 to 375F until golden, about 2 to 3 minutes. They are reheating cooked meat, so color is the only doneness cue.
Plan for the leftovers firstThe 8 oz of "cold roast rabbit" comes from legs and shoulders, which implies you roasted rabbits the day before (Ranhofer's No. 2142). Braised or confit rabbit leg meat works as well and is more forgiving than roast.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organized like a professional reference rather than a domestic cookbook — hence the constant numbered cross-references to sauces and garnishes elsewhere in the volume. The dish is one of hundreds Ranhofer names after a person or place, in the fashionable French manner of the period; such dedications were often to patrons, colleagues or public figures, and in many cases the honoree is now unidentifiable. Two things here are characteristic of the era's game cookery: the frugal professional logic of serving the prime loins hot from the saute pan while recycling the legs and shoulders of yesterday's roast into croquettes, and the loose labelling of the croquettes as "Hare" when they are made of rabbit — French kitchens distinguished lièvre from lapin sharply in principle. Larding with fine lardons, described here as if every cook owned the needle for it, was a standard way of dealing with lean meats.