shelidonDecember 10, 2023Leave a Comment

Today I bring you an old recipe reinterpreted through a Victorian’s eyes. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve seen this already in one of my long articles on the Ingoldsby Legends, specifically the one on The Lay of St Cuthbert.

Ingredients (for around 3 liters of soup):

• 3 young rabbits (approximately 200 grams of chopped meat should do, but you’ll need bones and their remains as well);
• 4 liters of clear veal broth;
• 2 onions;
• 1 head of celery;
• 3 carrots;
• aromatic herbs at will, such as thyme and marjoram, wrapped in a small pocket suitable for cooking;
• 2 blades of mace and a spoonful of pounded mace;
• half a teaspoon of white peppercorns;
• a pinch of salt;
• cayenne pepper, if agreeable;
• 250 grams of milk cream;
• 1 tablespoon of starch such as arrowroot;
• tarragon or chive for garnish.

Recipe:

Wash and soak the rabbit meat, put it in the soup pot and pour the veal broth, letting it stew gently for 30 minutes. The original recipe requires that you put them whole and then take them out, skin them, flesh them and all that jazz. I don’t expect you to: you can use skinned rabbits or the chopped flesh directly, but mind following at least this step: take the chopped pieces out of the broth and mince them after they have been stewing for thirty minutes. If you put minced mean directly in the broth, it will disappear, and you won’t be able to blame me.
Also, make sure to take away every single grain of fat from the meat, because rabbit fat is thoroughly disgusting.

Put the meat aside, but the broth should simmer a little more with the rabbit bones or the rest of the body. If you used chopped meat, you should at least have the bones but I suggest you add some remains like giblets: you can ask your butcher for them, or – if you live in a bit city like I do – they’re usually on sale in a special isle of the supermarket. Add the chopped onions, the celery, carrots, the small bag of savoury herbs, the mace, peppercorns and a pinch of salt.
Stew for three hours.
Yes, you heard me right. It’s a soup.

If you’re not dead by the time it finishes, strain it off, let it settle and pour it into a clean pan, mixing it with the pounded rabbit flesh while the broth is hot. Do it with care, small portions at a time, minding that the minced rabbit doesn’t gather into spontaneous meatballs. Add some more pounded mace, an additional pinch of salt if you like it savoury, cayenne pepper, put it back on the fire and stir it continuously. When it boils, mix the cream with starch and add it. You can also add a single spoonful to each dish if you prefer it, and garnish with some tarragon or chive.

Where does it come from?

This particular version is Rabbit Soup à la Reine within Eliza Acton‘s Modern Cooking for Private Families (1845). Should you not like rabbit, there’s a similarly called recipe in the same book, featuring oysters.