Clean and wash the rabbit, which must be plump and young, and having opened it all the way on the under-side, lay it flat, with a small plate or saucer to keep it down, in salted water for half an hour. Wipe dry and broil whole, with the exception of the head, when you have gashed across the back-bone in eight or ten places that the heat may penetrate this, the thickest part. Your fire should be hot and clear, the rabbit turned often. When browned and tender, lay upon a very hot dish, pepper and salt and butter profusely, turning the rabbit over and over to soak up the melted butter. Cover and set in the oven for five minutes, and heat in a tin cup two tablespoonfuls of vinegar seasoned with one of made mustard. Anoint the hot rabbit well with this, cover and send to table garnished with crisped parsley.
The odor of this barbecue is most appetizing, and the taste not a whit inferior.
Rabbit Pie.
Cut a pair of rabbits into eight pieces each, soak in salted water half an hour, and stew until half done in enough water to cover them. Cut a quarter of a pound of fat pork into slips, and boil four eggs hard. Lay some bits of pork in the bottom of a deep dish and upon these a layer of the rabbit. Upon this spread slices of boiled egg, peppered and buttered. Sprinkle, moreover, with a little powdered mace, and squeeze a few drops of lemon-juice upon each piece of meat. Proceed in this order until the dish is full, the top layer being pork. Pour in the water in which the rabbit was boiled, when you have salted it and added some lumps of butter rolled in flour. Cover with puff-paste, cut a slit in the middle, and bake one hour, laying paper over the top should it brown too fast.
SQUIRRELS.
The large gray squirrel is seldom eaten at the North, but is in great request in Virginia and other Southern States. It is generally barbecued, precisely as are rabbits; broiled, fricasseed, or—most popular of all—made into a Brunswick stew. This is named from Brunswick County, Virginia, and is a famous dish—or was—at the political and social pic-nics known as barbecues. I am happy to be able to give a receipt for this stew that is genuine and explicit, and for which I am indebted to a Virginia housekeeper.
Brunswick Stew. ✠
- 2 squirrels—3, if small.
- 1 quart of tomatoes—peeled and sliced.
- 1 pint butter-beans, or Lima.
- 6 potatoes—parboiled and sliced.
- 6 ears of green corn cut from the cob.
- ½ lb. butter.
- ½ lb. fat salt pork.
- 1 teaspoonful ground black pepper.
- Half a teaspoonful cayenne.
- 1 gallon water.
- 1 tablespoonful salt.
- 2 teaspoonfuls white sugar.
- 1 onion, minced small.
Put on the water with the salt in it, and boil five minutes. Put in the onion, beans, corn, pork or bacon cut into shreds, potatoes, pepper, and the squirrels, which must first be cut into joints and laid in cold salt and water to draw out the blood. Cover closely and stew two and a half hours very slowly, stirring frequently from the bottom. Then add the tomatoes and sugar, and stew an hour longer. Ten minutes before you take it from the fire add the butter, cut into bits the size of a walnut, rolled in flour. Give a final boil, taste to see that it is seasoned to your liking, and turn into a soup-tureen. It is eaten from soup-plates. Chickens may be substituted for squirrels.