No. 2379

Rabbit Tart or Pie with Fine Herbs

Tarte de Lapin aux Fines Herbes

Suppress the skin from two good rabbits; draw and wipe well the meats; separate them at the joints, bone the shoulders and the legs, decrease the size of the backbones without boning then entirely and split each one in two. With the necks, bones and a few game parings, make a small fumet (No. 397) with white wine. Cut half a pound of bacon into small slices; put them in a sautoir with butter, and heat for five minutes while stirring then remove with a skimmer, leaving the fat in the pan, and into this throw two spoonfuls each of onions, shallots and mushrooms; fry together for two minutes, then add the pieces of rabbit; season highly, being sparing of the salt, and besprinkle with pulverized with thyme. Cover the bottom of a pie dish (Fig. 183) intended for the oven with a layer of the bacon; on this place the pieces of rabbit, intermingling them with the fine herbs and bacon; pour into the bottom a few spoonfuls of the prepared fumet reduced to nearly half-glaze. Wet the edges of the dish, cover it with a thin band of puff paste fragments (No. 146) or fine foundation paste (No. 135); wet this band also. Cover the whole with a flat of puff paste parings, cut off the surplus around the edge of the dish, egg over twice and cook for an hour and a quarter in a slow oven; make a hole on the top and pour in the remainder of the fumet.

← No. 2378 Loin of Pork Tart or Pie—English Style Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2380 Veal Tart or Pie a la Dickinson →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional brigade with stock already made and puff-paste trimmings on hand. Reduced to its essentials this is a braise of jointed rabbit under a pastry lid, and the two things that decide whether it works are the strength of the fumet and the restraint with the salt.

The hinge: the fumetThe necks, bones and trimmings simmered with white wine are the whole sauce; there is no thickening and no cream. Reduce it until it is syrupy and coats a spoon ("nearly half-glaze"), add only a few spoonfuls to the dish before baking, and keep the rest hot to pour through the vent hole at the end.
SaltHalf a pound of bacon lines the dish and is layered through it. "Season highly, being sparing of the salt" means lean on pepper, thyme and the aromatics and let the bacon do the salting; a reduced fumet concentrates salt further.
Slow ovenRoughly 300–325F is the usual modern reading of a 'slow oven'; Ranhofer gives no temperature. An hour and a quarter at that sort of heat suits bone-in rabbit under a sealed crust — the meat is lean and turns stringy if pushed hot and fast. If the pastry is browning too quickly, tent it rather than lowering the heat.
Sautoir and spoonfulsA sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan. Ranhofer's 'spoonful' is generally taken to mean a tablespoon, which would put the aromatics at roughly 2 tbsp each of chopped onion, shallot and mushroom — a seasoning, not a stuffing.
RabbitTwo rabbits give several pounds of meat on the bone. Whole rabbit today commonly runs about 2.5–3 lb; wild rabbit is leaner and tougher and will need the longer end of the time. 'Decrease the size of the backbones' appears to mean trimming the saddle down before splitting each one in two, as the recipe directs.
The paste"Puff paste fragments" and "parings" are re-rolled trimmings, which puff less and hold their shape — exactly what you want on a pie that bakes for over an hour. All-butter bought puff pastry works; roll it a little thicker than for a vol-au-vent. The wetted band around the rim is what glues the lid on, so do not skip it.
Egging and the ventTwo coats of beaten egg, the second after the first has set, gives the dark gloss. Cut the steam hole only after baking, when you pour in the remaining fumet — cutting it beforehand lets the braising liquid boil out and the crust sag.
YieldA pie of this size should serve six to eight as a main course, though Ranhofer gives no yield. It is good hot, and arguably better lukewarm, when the reduced fumet has set to a light jelly.

A Little History

This is entry 2379 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of the cooking he did across his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York; the surrounding numbers — a loin of pork pie in the English style, a veal pie à la Dickinson — show how the book treats the baked meat pie as a family of variations rather than a single dish. Fines herbes here does not mean the modern quartet of parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon; in older French kitchen usage the term could cover a fine hash of onion, shallot and mushroom, which is what Ranhofer specifies here, with thyme added separately. Rabbit was ordinary market meat in the 1890s, cheap and lean, and it appears throughout the book without apology. The structure of the recipe — bones into a fumet, fumet reduced, reduction poured back through a hole in the finished crust — is the same device used in the English raised pie, where jellied stock is funnelled in after baking so the filling is not swimming as it cooks.