No. 274

Puree of Leveret or Young Rabbit, St. James

Puree de Levraut ou Lapereau St. James

Remove all the bones from the leverets or young rabbits, break up the carcasses, and fry them in butter with minced onions, carrots and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf and celery, moisten with four quarts of broth, let the liquid boil up, then skim, and season with salt, pepper and cloves, continue to boil for one hour, then strain through a sieve. Cut up the meat in three quarter inch squares; fry these in butter with two ounces of lean ham, adding four tablespoonfuls of flour, and mix all well together, then moisten with the above stock, let boil and finish cooking. When the meats are well done, drain them off, and pound them in a mortar, diluting this puree with the stock, then press it through a sieve or tammy, the latter being preferable, for all purees are improved by being pressed through a tammy, as it removes any grains that may be in them. Heat the soup without boiling, season to taste, and incorporate into it a piece of good butter weighing a quarter of a pound, stirring it sharply with a spoon till thoroughly melted. Add a garnishing composed of small game and cream forcemeat (No. 75) timbales, the size and shape of half a pigeon's egg, poached in a slack oven and served in the soup.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade, a mortar and a tammy cloth; the method survives intact if you substitute a blender and a fine chinois. The recipe gives no yield, but four quarts of broth plus the meat of two young animals makes roughly 12 to 16 first-course servings.

Leveret and lapereauA leveret is a hare in its first year, a lapereau a young rabbit. The recipe gives no number or weight; two whole rabbits of about 2 1/2 to 3 lb each would suit the scale of four quarts of broth. Farmed rabbit is milder and leaner than wild hare, so the finished puree will be paler and less gamey.
The quantities that are missingNo weights are given for the onions, carrots or aromatics. For four quarts of stock, two medium onions, two carrots and a bundle of parsley, thyme, a bay leaf and a celery stalk is a reasonable working proportion.
A slack ovenFor the poached timbales, read roughly 275-300F. Set them in a water bath and cook only until firm to the touch, which at that size takes very little time; they will curdle if the water is allowed to simmer.
Tammy versus sieveA tammy is a stretched worsted cloth through which puree was forced with a wooden spoon or by twisting the cloth. A blender followed by a fine-mesh conical strainer does the same job with less labour; the point of both is to remove the grain left by pounded meat.
Do not boil after the butter goes inThe quarter pound of butter is a monter au beurre finish. Heat the soup to just below a simmer, whisk the cold butter in off direct heat, and serve at once. Boiling will break the emulsion and leave a greasy film.
The flourFour tablespoons of flour into the fried meat and ham is a light roux by modern standards for four quarts. Cook it two or three minutes before moistening so the soup does not taste of raw flour; the puree itself supplies most of the body.
Straining the first stockThe bone stock is boiled only one hour, which is enough for small carcasses. Skim carefully after the first boil, as the recipe directs, since the fried butter will otherwise cloud the finished soup.
The garnishThe forcemeat timbales are optional but they are what distinguishes this from a plain rabbit veloute. Small quenelles of ground rabbit bound with cream and egg white, poached and floated in the bowl, give the same effect.

A Little History

This is No. 274 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some thirty years as chef of Delmonico's in New York. The soup chapter runs to dozens of numbered purees, each named for a place, a person or a house style, and the St. James label follows the French convention of attaching a title rather than describing the dish. Rabbit and hare were ordinary market goods in nineteenth-century America, sold whole and often wild, and a puree was the standard way to make a small carcass feed a table: the bones make the stock, the meat is pounded into the body of the soup, nothing is discarded. The cross-reference to No. 75 for the cream forcemeat is typical of the book's structure, which expects the reader to be working through a professional kitchen's repertoire rather than cooking a single dish.