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Rabbit Soup
Remove skin, cut feet, tail and head from a very small fresh rabbit, then cut it in half-inch-square pieces. Place in a saucepan with six branches very clean celery, an onion, a seeded green pepper and two leeks cut in small squares, add an ounce butter and gently brown for ten minutes. Sprinkle with an ounce flour, stir well, brown for five minutes more, pour in two quarts and a half water, a gill red wine and two minutes more, pour in two quarts and a half water, a gill red wine and two gills demi-glace. Tie in a bunch two branches parsley, a branch chervil, sprig thyme, bay leaf and sprig sage, add to soup with two teaspoons salt and half teaspoon pepper, then let gently boil for an hour and a half, mixing once in a while. Remove bouquet, add two tablespoons sherry, lightly mix, pour soup into a tureen and serve.
A straightforward brown soup built on a rabbit browned in butter and thickened with flour. The verbatim text carries a printer's error — a line is duplicated — so read the liquid additions as one step.
- The duplicated line"pour in two quarts and a half water, a gill red wine and two minutes more, pour in two quarts and a half water..." is a typesetting repeat. The intent is a single addition: 2.5 quarts water, 1 gill red wine, 2 gills demi-glace.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. So 1/2 cup red wine and 1 cup demi-glace.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole sauce and brown stock reduced together; in practice a deeply reduced brown stock. Commercial tubs of concentrate are usually much more intense, so use considerably less than the stated volume, or substitute about 1 cup of strong reduced brown stock.
- Rabbit and bone"A very small fresh rabbit" points to a young animal. Cutting it into half-inch pieces means chopping through bone; ask the butcher to do it, or joint it, simmer, and pick the meat off before serving. Warn diners about bone fragments either way.
- ChervilRarely stocked and it fades fast. Flat-leaf parsley with a pinch of tarragon is the closest ordinary substitute. Sage is assertive — one small sprig, no more.
- The browningTen minutes on the rabbit and vegetables, then five more after the flour, are both meant to develop colour, not merely soften. Keep the heat moderate and let the flour turn the shade of dark straw; a pale roux leaves the soup tasting raw and floury.
- Simmer, not boil"Let gently boil" is best read as a bare simmer. A hard boil will cloud a flour-thickened soup and shred the meat off the bone.
- The sherryStirred in at the very end, after the bouquet comes out and just before the soup goes into the tureen; keeping it off the boil preserves the aroma. Dry or medium -- not cream sherry.
- YieldClose to 3 quarts of liquid go into the pot; after an hour and a half's simmering expect appreciably less, enough for eight as a first course.
Rabbit was cheap, plentiful and unremarkable on both sides of the Atlantic when this book appeared — hutch rabbits were a common backyard meat in American cities, and wild rabbit filled out the winter table in Europe. What marks this as a professional kitchen's recipe rather than a farmhouse one is the demi-glace: a cook who keeps reduced brown stock on hand is working from the classic French repertoire, where a soup like this would be built exactly this way — brown the meat and aromatics, dust with flour, wet with stock and wine, and finish with fortified wine at the last moment. The green pepper among the leeks and celery reads as the one unmistakably American note. The bouquet garni, tied so it can be lifted out whole, is the same device French cooks had used since at least the eighteenth century.