No. 2249

Crepine of Young Rabbits

Crepine de Lapereaux

Remove all the meats from two raw young rabbits after they have been properly cleaned; suppress all the skin and sinews and chop up finely, then mix in an equal quantity of chopped fresh pork and season highly. Chop all this once more together, adding one-sixth of the same quantity of cooked fine herbs (No. 385) such as onions, shallots, mushrooms, truffles and parsley. Lay this hash on a large piece of "crepine" or caul fat and roll it up oval shape, flatten to half an inch in thickness, butter over with a brush and place it in a deep, narrow, but long baking pan; cook for thirty or forty minutes in a slack oven while basting occasionally. Drain and dress on a dish, serving at the same time a sauce-boatful of good gravy reduced with game glaze (No. 398).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A forcemeat of raw rabbit and fresh pork wrapped in caul fat and roasted flat — essentially a crépinette scaled up to a single sharing piece. The only tricky sourcing is the caul.

Crépine means caul fatThis is the lacy fatty membrane enveloping a pig's abdominal organs; it is often sold frozen by whole-animal butchers, though it may need ordering ahead. Thaw it, then soak 15 minutes in warm water with a splash of vinegar so it relaxes and can be unfolded without tearing; pat dry before wrapping. It melts during cooking and bastes the meat from the inside.
A slack ovenAround 300–325°F. The low heat matters here: roasted hard, the forcemeat will squeeze out its juices and go crumbly. The recipe asks only for occasional basting with the rendered fat; every ten minutes or so is a reasonable reading.
QuantitiesTwo young rabbits yield roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb of boneless meat, so you need an equal weight of fresh pork and, reading the one-sixth against the rabbit, about 4 to 5 oz of the cooked herb mixture. Use fatty pork — shoulder or belly — not loin, or the result is dry.
"Season highly"For a raw forcemeat, weigh the meat and use 1.5 percent salt by weight, plus black pepper, a little nutmeg or quatre épices. Fry a teaspoon of the mix and taste it before wrapping; you cannot correct the seasoning afterwards.
The cooked fine herbs (No. 385)Ranhofer's fine herbs are not raw chopped parsley but a cooked mixture: onion and shallot sweated in butter with chopped mushrooms until the moisture has gone, finished with truffle and parsley. A dry duxelles with a minced shallot stands in exactly. Cook it and cool it fully — warm, wet herbs will slacken the farce.
Game glaze (No. 398)Game stock reduced to a syrup. In its place, reduce good brown chicken or veal stock with the reserved rabbit bones (roasted first) until it coats a spoon, then whisk the pan drippings into it.
DonenessThirty to forty minutes suits a roll flattened to half an inch. Because it contains raw pork, check the centre reads 160°F rather than relying on time alone; a thicker roll needs longer and will need the same target.
Yield and servingServes six to eight as an entrée. Rest it five minutes, then cut across into thick slices on the diagonal — it slices far more cleanly warm than hot — with the sauce passed separately as written.

A Little History

Crépinettes — forcemeat parcels wrapped in caul rather than gut casing — are old French charcuterie, and the flat oval shape is what distinguishes them from a sausage; the caul both binds and lards the mixture, which is why they suit lean meats like rabbit, hare and game birds. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a comprehensive record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its cross-references to numbered preparations (fine herbs at No. 385, game glaze at No. 398) reflect a professional kitchen where those components were standing items rather than things made from scratch for one dish. Rabbit appears in the book among its game and miscellaneous entrées: in the late nineteenth century it was cheap and sold dressed in American markets, and a young rabbit was valued for pale, tender flesh that took kindly to being ground with pork. The habit of serving such an entrée with nothing but a reduced glaze in a sauce-boat is characteristic of the period's grand-restaurant style.