Pest for Dinner.

Today I want to tackle a tricky subject - the rabbit. Once upon a time there were no rabbits in Australia. Then, in 1788, the First Fleet arrived. The ships carried not only convicts, but also breeding stock for future food – including the rabbit.

By the mid-nineteenth century it became clear that a species spectacularly damaging to the ecology of this large country was on the loose and multiplying faster than you can say “rabbit rabbit rabbit.” Strangely though, it appears that escaped First Fleet rabbits perhaps did not spawn this plague, but that it was the progeny of specimens introduced in 1859 by a wealthy landowner in Victoria called John Austin, who released them on his property to provide future hunting amusement.

Many methods to control the rabbit population have been tried over the decades, including poisons, trapping, biological warfare (myxomatosis and calicivirus) and the building of a (theoretically) rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia. The bad ecological news is that the rabbit still survives here in the wild, but the irony is that it is no longer free bush tucker but an expensive delicacy at the butcher’s – presumably because the rabbits sold there are the cage-reared, disease-free version. Rabbit is now more expensive than rump steak.

In 1938 however, disease-free wild rabbits were there for the taking, and consequently a number of recipes for it were submitted to the Perth newspaper competition.

Rabbit Soup.
Take two large rabbits, half a head of celery, two carrots, one onion, salt, pepper, half a pint of milk and two quarts of water. Cut the rabbits up and well wash. Put into saucepan, boil with water about an hour and a half. Take the rabbit out and add the vegetables, salt, pepper and milk. Simmer for two hours. Sufficient for seven people.

Savoury Rabbit.
Use the meat taken from the soup, a quarter pound of fat bacon, two onions, one teaspoon chopped parsley, half a teaspoonful mixed herbs, four tablespoon flour, salt and pepper. Cut the rabbit and bacon in small pieces, put in a baking dish with chopped onions, parsley, herbs salt and pepper. Mix the flour with two tablespoons cornflour to a thin paste with milk. Pour the mixture into dish bake in moderate oven about an hour.

Rabbit Mould.
One rabbit, one oz. gelatine, three peeled tomatoes, one quart stock, sprig parsley, half lemon, three rashers bacon, two onions, two hard boiled eggs, half tablespoon bacon fat and seasoning. Blanch and joint rabbit, place in a sauce- pan with bacon fat, brown lightly all over, add cold water and onion, remove rind from bacon, cut up and add to pan, cover and simmer till rabbit is tender, remove bones, strain and season, add gelatine, dissolved in a little water, add juice of lemon. Decorate mould with slices of hard boiled eggs, and tomatoes and leave till set. Fill up with rabbit, turn out when cold.

Quotation for the Day.

Hare is respectable, even distinguished; rabbit is common and vulgar, and it is good form to turn up the nose at it.
Waverley Root.

Fit for a King.

There was a sudden large spike in visits to this blog a couple of weeks ago. When I looked to see what had triggered it, most of the searches were for ‘Eggs Drumkilbo.’ This puzzled me for a while. Then I remembered a rumour that those of you in The Old Country are in for a royal wedding pretty soon. Thankfully we are somewhat protected from the hype over here in the old colony. Eggs Drumkilbo is apparently a dish popular with the royals - especially for wedding breakfasts - on account of it having being a favourite with the dear old Queen Mum. I put this and that together and came up with the theory that perhaps the menu details for the wedding breakfast of the Future King and his bride were being discussed in the press, and the egg dish was named, and, it not being a dish readily available in the caffs and pubs of England, more members of the public than usual Googled it and my story came up. Any truth in that theory? Someone out there must be an avid reader of all things relating to the royal wedding, surely.

All of this led me to the idea that I must give you a right royal menu. The bill of fare (the ‘purveyance’) for a feast for King Richard II (1377-1399) is given in Constance Hieatt’s indispensible book Curye on Inglysch . I have adapted the translation from the old English to make it a little more accessible to food enthusiasts who are not medieval food scholars, and hope that not too many inaccuracies have been introduced in the doing.

This is the purveyance (bill of fare) for the feast for the king at home for his own table. Venison with frumenty in potage, boars' heads, boiled large joints of meat, roasted swan, roasted fat capons, peas, pike, and two subtleties. White pudding, a jellied dish, roast pork, roasted cranes, roasted pheasants, roasted herons, roasted peacocks, bream (fish), tarts, meat served in pieces, roasted rabbit, and one subtlety. German broth, a ‘lombard’(a ‘solid’ spiced dish with pork, dried fruits and eggs in a sauce of almond milk or wine), roasted venison, roasted egret, roasted peacocks, roasted perch, roasted pigeons, roasted rabbits, roasted quails, roasted larks, a puff pastry dish (probably containing fruit – ‘mete’ in this sense referring to ‘food’, not specifically flesh meat), perch, a rice dish, fritters, and two subtleties.

Many of the dishes mentioned have previously appeared in this blog, but as time is short for me today to provide links to earlier posts (there are almost a million words to search now), I invite you to search for the terms yourself, should you be interested. If time permits later today I will return and do the links for you.

The Master Cooks of King Richard II left us their ‘cookery book’, and I have referred to it and given many recipes from it in the past. It is called The Forme of Cury. There are no instructions in it for boiling or roasting the vast amounts of meat on this menu – no cook would have needed these. The manuscript is more like an aide-memoire for the made-dishes, for cooks who did not need detailed instructions on actual methods.

I give you the recipe from the manuscript for the ‘German broth’ (bruet of almayne’, or ‘brewet of almony’ as it is called here.) It is a dish of pieces of rabbit (or kid), cooked with almond milk and sweet spices and thickened with rice flour – and sounds delicious.

Brewet Of Almony
Take Conynges or kiddes and hewe hem small on moscels other on pecys. parboile hem with the same broth, drawe an almaunde mylke and do the fleissh therwith, cast therto powdour galyngale & of gynger with flour of Rys. and colour it with alkenet. boile it, salt it. & messe
it forth with sugur and powdour douce.

Quotation for the Day.

When we decode a cookbook, every one of us is a practicing chemist. Cooking is really the oldest, most basic application of physical and chemical forces to natural materials.
Arthur E. Grosser (Professor of Chemistry at McGill University) 1984

Musical Food.

Today, October 10^th …

This day in 1948 was the first performance of Leonard Bernstein’s La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano. The recipes translated and set to music by Bernstein were from La Bonne Cuisine Française by Emile Dumont, and his specific choices were 1. Plum Pudding 2. Queues de Boeuf (‘Ox Tails”) 3. Tavouk Gueunksis 4. Civet à Toute Vitesse (“Rabbit at Top Speed”).

I had thought to give you the song-recipes, but it appears that they are top-secret and unavailable due to strict observance of copyright, which is of course a good thing. The slight mystery to me is the Tavouk Gueunkis. The song starts by saying it is “so Oriental” (I did learn that much), and presumably it is a chicken dish (tavouk = chicken, right?) Someone help me here, please.

Plum pudding recipes are aplenty in the Christmas recipe archive, so it wont do for today’s recipe. I had a lovely Ox-tail ravioli at a local restaurant recently, so felt like a change. Rabbit it has to be.

There is a lovely little book published in 1859 called The gourmet's guide to rabbit cooking, by an old epicure (who is presumably the Georgiana Hill of the title page.) It gives 124 receipts for rabbit, but first, the author explains its culinary value thus:

Firstly, to quote from our friends the French, who possess an aptitude for delicacy of expression of which an English cook is totally deficient, the charm of rabbits consists in their being so easily and agreeably accommodated (mark the word), and in their capability of producing a variety of compositions, which, if proceeding from the hands of an able artiste, may, or elegance, be ranked amongst the most recherche dishes that can dignify the table of refined and enlightened amphitryons. Another thing recommendable in rabbits is their cheapness. Even one solitary rabbit will make a pretty appearance at a dinner, whereas its equivalent money's-worth of butcher's meat would be quite an uncomfortable object to contemplate. They are likewise easily obtained, being in season nearly throughout the year, are quickly dressed, have very little weight of bone, will keep well, and, besides being considered wholesome and easy of digestion, have, according to the following old rhyme, a property ascribed to them which confirms us in our estimation of their merits, and exemplifies the wisdom of the originators of cookery, in causing so favourable a combination of forces as ensues from their alliance with the admirable esculent which usually accompanies them in their culinary career :

For onions, you know, are generally said
To be an excellent remedy for a cold in the head;
And rabbits, I'm told by those who are smart,
Are a capital cure for a cold in the heart.

The author of the cookbook does give plenty of recipes for rabbit with these admirable esculents as an ingredient, but a couple of other more unusual combinations caught my eye and distracted me from my search for the speediest recipes.

Laver is a “marine algae” (i.e seaweed), is having somewhat of a comeback I understand, and is often served with gammon and suchlike, so perhaps not so strange with rabbit. Caviar, on the other hand, must be an unusual ingredient in a rabbit dish, yes?

Rabbit and Laver.
Cut up a very tender rabbit fry it in butter until it is quite done and appears beautifully brown. While it is doing put four ounces of fresh butter into a saucepan and when melted add the juice of a whole lemon a little Cayenne pepper and two table spoonfuls of fresh laver. Let it become almost boiling hot lay your rabbit upon a well warmed dish pour the laver sauce over it and serve as quickly as possible The perfection of this dish depends upon the promptitude of sending it to table for unless it is eaten hot the fineness of its flavour is lost.

Rabbit and Caviare.
Choose a fine fat rabbit cut it into joints season it lightly and put it into a stewpan with a quarter of a pound of fresh butter shake it over the fire until you think it is half done then pour in half a pint of white wine and allow it to stay upon the hob to simmer. Prepare a table spoonful of unpressed caviare and put it into another stewpan by the side of the fire moisten it with a tea cupful of gravy and soon after pour in half a pint of rich cream let it reduce slowly and when both are done dish up the meat upon the caviare.

On this Topic ...

We considered the dangers of rabbit aboard ship, and the essential differences between rabbit and hare in previous posts.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Family Fare.

Quotation for the Day …

Intellectual men who quickly wolf down whatever nourishment is necessary for their bodies with a kind of disdain, may be very rational and have a noble intelligence, but they are not men of taste. Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin (1804-1869).

Mumbled or Scrambled?

Today, September 13th ...

I am at the airport in Narita, Japan, filling in time until my flight - and it occurred to me that I could use some of that time to publish this post. I think it is Wednesday, isnt it? I am not sure what body-time it is, but it is not a comfortable one. Anyhow - here is today's story ...

A recent post about an unseemly scramble for palace leftovers in the mid-eighteenth century created some discussion of the use of the word ‘scramble’ in relation to a method of cooking. I indicated that the OED gave the first use of the word I 1891, but reader Anne M. identified a recipe for scrambled eggs in Mrs Hale’s New Cook Book, by Sarah Josepha Hale, published in 1857.

Somewhere in between those dates, the same dish was also called ‘mumbled eggs, or rumble-tumble’ – again, the authority is the OED which cites its appearance in 1879, in a book with the intriguing title of Indian Household Management, by Mrs James. Another book for my wish list. The use of the verb ‘to mumble’(in the culinary sense, meaning ‘to cook to a soft pulp’) is supported by a quotation from much earlier – from 1728 in fact. It is a recipe from The compleat housewife: or, accomplished gentlewoman's companion, by E.Smith, published in 1728.

To mumble Rabbets and Chickens.
Put into the Bellies of your Rabbets, or Chickens, some Parsley, an Onion, and the Liver; set it over the Fire in the Stew-pan with as much Water as will cover them, with a little Salt; When they are half boiled take them out, and shred the Parsley, Liver, and Onion, and tear the Flesh from the Bones of the Rabbet in small flakes, and put it into the Stew-pan again with a very little of the Liquor it was boiled in, and a pint of White-wine, and some Gravy, and half a pound or more of Butter and some grated Nutmeg; when ‘tis enough, shake in a little Flour, and thicken it up with Butter. Serve it on Sippets.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Finally, a Salad.

Quotation for the Day …

Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember; and I remember more than I have seen. Benjamin Disraeli