Roast rabbit
Leave the heads on in cleaning them. Stuff the bodies with a forcemeat of fat salt pork, minced onion and fine crumbs, well seasoned with pepper and salt. Sew them up with fine thread and lay upon thin slices of pork covering the grating of the roaster. Lay other slices of pork over them, pour over all a cupful of stock and roast one hour. Remove the pork then, wash with butter, dredge with flour and brown.
Drain off the gravy, lay the bits of bacon about the rabbit in the dish; thicken the gravy with browned floor. Boil up, add a tablespoonful of tomato catsup and a glass of claret, and take from the fire.
Casserole of rabbit
Skin, clean and cut up as for fricassee. Make two pieces of each back. Fry a dozen slices of fat salt pork in a frying-pan, then two sliced onions to a pale brown. Strain the fat back into the pan, keeping the shreds of onion and pork in a bowl by themselves. Pepper, salt and dredge with flour the jointed hare and fry, a few pieces at a time, in the same fat. Have ready parboiled about two dozen potato balls and half as many baby onions, with half a cupful of button mushrooms, canned or fresh. When the meat is well seared on both sides, lay some in the casserole, then six potato balls and two or three onions with a few mushrooms. Strew the chopped salt pork over them, season with pepper and dredge with browned flour. Proceed in this order until the casserole is full. Cover with cold stock or gravy, put on the cover, filling in the cracks where it joins the casserole with flour paste; and cook slowly three hours before opening it. If tender, then drain off the gravy carefully not to disturb the various layers. Put into a saucepan, thicken with browned flour; season with tomato catsup and salt and pepper if needed. Boil one minute; stir in a tablespoonful of tart jelly and the same of lemon juice; return to the casserole; replace the cover and leave in an open oven for five minutes before serving.
Stewed rabbits
Clean and joint as for the casserole, cutting each joint and halving the backs. Proceed in the same way, also, to fry the pork, onion and meat when you have peppered, salted and floured this last.
Then pack in a saucepan, pour in enough stock (or butter and water) barely to cover it; season with salt, pepper, sweet herbs and onion juice; cover closely and stew slowly for two hours, or until tender. Drain the gravy into another saucepan, setting that containing the meat, covered, in a larger vessel of boiling water. Thicken the gravy with a big lump of butter worked up with browned flour, a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce and one of kitchen bouquet; pour back upon the meat and let all stand together in boiling water for five minutes.
Belgian hares
May be cooked in any of the ways described in recipes for preparing wild hares for table use.