Rabbit Pie. Cut up two young rabbits, season with white pepper, salt, a little mace, and nutmeg, all in fine powder; add also a little cayenne. Pack the rabbit with slices of ham, forcemeat balls, and hard eggs, by turns in layers. If it is to be baked in a dish add a little water, but omit the water if it is to be raised in a crust. By the time it is taken out of the oven have ready a gravy of knuckle of veal, or a bit of the scrag, with some shank bones of mutton, seasoned with herbs, onions, mace, and white pepper. If the pie is to be eaten hot, truffles, morels or mushrooms may be added, but not if intended to be eaten cold. If it be made in a dish put as much gravy as will fill the dish, but in raised crusts the gravy must be carefully strained, and then put in cold as jelly.
Rabbit Pudding. Cut a rabbit into sixteen pieces, and slice a quarter of a pound of bacon; season with chopped sage, pepper, and salt; then add potatoes and onions according to the size of the family, and half a pint of water. Boil for two hours. The meat and vegetables must be well mixed. Rice may be substituted for potatoes if preferred.
Rabbit, Ragout of. “Wash and clean a good-sized Ostend rabbit; boil the liver and heart, chop them, and mix with veal stuffing; fill the rabbit, sew it up, and tie it into shape. Put a piece of fat beef and 1 lb. of bacon, cut in slices, into a saucepan, with 1 oz. of dripping; put in the rabbit to brown, turning it over to brown both sides; pour off the dripping, and put in 1 quart of water; let it simmer gently an hour and a half. A quarter of an hour before serving skim off all the fat, and thicken the gravy with a little corn flour; season with pepper and salt, and, if liked, stew a bunch of herbs and half an onion with it. Lay the rabbit on a dish with the bacon round it, and pour the gravy over.” (Tegetmeier.)
RAC′AHOUT. Syn. Racahout des Arabes. This is said to be farina prepared from the acorns of Quercus Ballota, or Barbary oak, disguised with a little flavouring. The following is recommended as an imitation:—Roasted cacao or chocolate nuts, 4 oz.; tapioca, and potato farina, of each 6 oz.; white sugar, slightly flavoured with vanilla, 1⁄2 lb. Very nutritious. Used as arrow-root.
RACE′MIC ACID. Syn. Paratartaric acid. This compound was discovered by Kestner in 1820, replacing tartaric acid in grape juice of the Department of the Vosges. Racemic acid and tartaric acid have exactly the same composition, and yield, when exposed to heat, the same products; the racemates also correspond in the closest manner with the tartrates. Racemic acid is rather less soluble than tartaric, and separates first from a solution containing the two acids. A solution of racemic acid precipitates a neutral salt of calcium, which is not the case with tartaric acid.
A solution of racemic acid does not affect a ray of polarised light, while a solution of tartaric acid rotates the ray to the right.
“Dessargnes and Jungfleisch found by experiment that under the influence of heat ordinary tartaric acid is readily transformed into inactive tartaric acid and racemic acid, and the latter chemist thought to find in this fact an explanation of the production of racemic acid.
“But observations continued through many years upon mother liquors from various tartaric acid factories showed that although more or less inactive tartaric acid was present in all of them, racemic acid was not, even when they had been subjected to prolonged treatment, and its occurrence in appreciable quantity was confined to a small number of specimens. In fact, some samples of mother liquor from factories where evaporation was carried on in a partial vacuum contained more racemic acid than others from factories where evaporation was carried on over a pure fire. Recently Jungfleisch noticed that the liquors richest in inactive tartaric acid were also rich in alumina, and the suspicion that alumina favoured the conversion was confirmed by direct experiment; also that the neutral aluminum sulphate has but little action. Jungfleisch has come to the conclusion that when there is an accumulation of alumina on the mother liquor, the conditions are favorable for the production of a large proportion of inactive tartaric acid, and a small proportion of racemic acid, although when the latter is present in considerable quantity, it becomes the most manifest through its comparative insolubility. Examination of liquors from which racemic acid has been deposited has always shown them to contain much inactive tartaric acid. This theory does not exclude the probability that certain vines under particular conditions produce racemic acid.”[134]
[134] ‘Pharmaceutical Journal.’
RACK′ING. See Cider and Wines.