FoodNet

The spirit of cookery

1895

Page 301 · 2 recipe records on this page

Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
tive, to signalize a dish, and to describe the form of the ingredients of the dish. Magiric authors of the last century placed bresolles with scallops, as they termed them casca- lopeSy and implied thereby slices of meat of the size of a penny, which might be cut from veal, mutton, lamb, or rabbit ; they were always fried in oil, and then transformed into a ragout, to be served as entree or as hors d’muvre. Some modern French anecdote-hunters derive the name of the dish from that of a French marquis who served during the Seven Years’ War, in the course of which his valet is said to have invented the dish, and termed it, after his master, Bresolles. But bresolles were in use and well known long before that date, as is shown by the fact that, to- gether with cascalopes, they occupy the whole of chapter iii. of vol. iii. of La Chapelle’s ‘ Cuisinier Moderne.’ We have met in books of the present time v^'ith paragraphs on Lapins an Brezole, and with the deviating spelling a very different dish, which we believe more likely to have been invented by the valet than the other one. For the rabbit’s flesh worked into a farce, with the usual additions, was to be tied up in the rabbit-skin, and braised, but you were not told how to deal with the hair of the skin. Brdsolles of Fillets icith Croquettes of Legs of Babbit are a very accomplished dish, to be served with garnishes and allemande sauce. Babbit cooked in its Skin is a recipe of Vuillemot’s, from the time when he was proprietor of the Tete Noire at St. Cloud, and had a contract for the sale of rabbits from large hunting-fields. It was then that he made that dish of a hundred rabbits' tongioes, which was so much admired. The rabbit to be cooked in its skin should be a wild one, and have been captured with a snare. It should be gutted and stuffed through a small opening. Some oilBabbit Cooked in Its Skin is then to be introduced between skin and flesh, and distributed by hanging up the carcase and changing its position from head 478 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY up to head down, and vice, vers A, every hour. It is then to be roasted before the fire, the oil acting as only basting. The hair, which becomes loose, is to be brushed off with some couch grass ; when it is done, pull off the entire skin and keep the hair off the roast by blowing. Dish with a sauce. There seems no poetry about the dish, or skill in the overcoming of the self-created difficulties. Boiled Babbit can be done in half an hour, and be accompanied with a liver and lemon sauce. Many other modes of preparation of rabbit are very interesting, and good to eat : Polpettes of Babbit {a Vltalienne), flavoured with Parma cheese ; Gratinatecl Babbit, baked over slices of ham, and covered with farce ; Timbale of Babbit, a complicated ragout ; Larded Babbit braised with Turnips ; Babbit in Papillote, grilled ; Mari- naded and Fried Babbit, immersed in a batter ; Legs of Babbits, skiffed — the cavities of the boned legs are filled with farce, and the dish is termed Lapereaux en Bottines, of two variations: one is larded, the other one not; Babbit in Mayonnaise, hot or cold, is a useful dish. La Chapelle in 1740 gave more than twenty explicit recipes for dishes produced from rabbit — amongst them, nineteen entrees, which fill the whole of chapter ix. of his third volume.Boiled Babbit