Roast Rabbits.
A pair rabbits.
½ pound fat salt pork, cut into thin slices.
2 table-spoonfuls butter, and 1 glass of wine.
Bread-crumbs, chopped pork, parsley, grated lemon-peel, salt and pepper for the stuffing.
1 egg, beaten light, and 1 onion, sliced.
Skin and clean the rabbits (or hares), and lay in cold salt-and-water half an hour. Prepare the dressing as above directed, binding with the egg. Wipe the rabbits dry inside and out, stuff with the prepared mixture, and sew them up closely. Cover the backs of the rabbits with the sliced pork, binding it in place with packthread wound around and around the bodies. Lay them in the baking-pan, backs uppermost; pour into it about two cupfuls of cold water, cover closely, and steam for an hour, raising the upper pan now and then to pour a few spoonfuls of the boiling water about the rabbits over their backs, that the pork may not crisp; then remove the cover, clip the packthread, and take off the pork. Brown the rabbits, basting bountifully and frequently with butter. Chop the pork, and crisp in a frying-pan with the sliced onion. When the rabbits are done transfer to a hot dish; pour the gravy into a saucepan with the pork and onion. Boil up once, and strain before thickening with browned flour. Add the wine, give a final boil, and pour over and about the rabbits, sending up the surplus in a tureen.
Pigeons and grouse are very fine roasted in this way, also partridges.