Rabbits
Rabbits should be young and tender, but full-grown and fat. Two are required to make a dish. One rabbit, except for an invalid, is scarcely worth the trouble of cooking; and, being naturally insipid, it must have certain seasoning to make it taste well. The hare, so much prized in England, owes its reputation entirely to their mode of dressing it, which is troublesome, expensive, and in our country would never become popular, unless the animal had in itself more to recommend it. With all that can be done for a hare, it is, when cooked, black, dry, hard; and if it has been kept long enough to acquire what they call the “true game flavor,” so much the worse. A fine fat well-fed tame rabbit is much better. In Virginia, the negroes frequently call a large rabbit “a hare”—or rather “a yar;” and though they know it to be young, they generally term it “that old yar.” We opine that with them “yars” are not admired. If a rabbit is really old his ears are tough, and his claws blunt and rough with coarse hairs growing between them. A young rabbit has short sharp claws, and ears so tender that on trying you can easily tear them. Rabbits should be cooked the day they are killed. Always cut off the head. A rabbit dished whole, with its head on, is, to most persons, a disgusting sight. The head of no small animal is worth eating, and always looks disagreeable when cooked.
The livers of rabbits should be added to the gravy.