Any reason why they didn't get their own "meat name" then? I thought that the "cow/beef"-"pig/pork" split was due do that, with the initially Norman nobles consuming most of that luxury meat. Thus nothing for "chicken", either. Did "lapin" or something like that get lost?
QI s05e03 “Eating” talked about how Hudson Bay trappers were so fond of eating rabbit that they died! Rabbit is so delicious that they didn’t eat a balanced diet and suffered - fatally - from lack of vitamins etc!!
The title buries the lead: rabbits executing hunters in the Smithfield Decretal illustrations. Seems British humour has a tradition at least to the 14th Century.
I've only eaten rabbit once and it was bathed in garlic butter so I don't really remember it. Besides the "tastes like chicken hehe" stereotype, is there any knock-your-socks-off dish made with rabbit where it's center stage?
Yes. In fact, the famous ultra-orthodox traditional paella that Valencians stick to has rabbit. But many other variants do as well. In my family we often eat a simpler version with no chicken, but more rabbit, called just "rice with rabbit", and IMHO it's even better. The best rice you can have without seafood in it :) And I've always liked fishing for the rabbit's liver.
At one of my ancestral villages in Galicia, rabbit empanada is also a thing, and tastes amazing. But it's seen less and less often because it's messy to eat (it's cooked with bones so you have to open the empanada, remove the bones and close it again) so people tend to use fillings without that problem now.
The european rabbit (and the domesticated rabbit, which descends from it) is native to the Iberian peninsula. There are ~20 extant species called rabbits all over the world (most though not all leporids outside of Lepus, the true hares).
well they are native almost everywhere but according to legend it was named i-spn-ya (Land of the Rabbits) by the Phoenician although some suggest that SPN could also have meant North instead of rabbits so land of the north.
If I recall, the word 'España' or 'Hispania' refers to an old word for 'hyrax', for which rabbit were mistaken for. Could be apocraphyl but it's a nice idea.
Hare is pretty common game here in Finland and I think I must have eaten that fairly regularly when I was little but I have absolutely no recollection what it actually tasted like.
Only recipe I've seen was indeed a stew where the ingredients were almost "one rabbit, unholy amounts of garlic".
From Turkey, as far as I can tell, rabbit doesn’t show up much on menus so it seems to vary a lot by region. But if you have a recipe to recommend, I’d love to try it :)
i have a very specific recipe passed down in my family, i boil in a mix of water and vinegar for about 20-25 minutes, before roasting it in the oven with potatoes and garlic. That way the specific taste and especially the smell is brought down, but it's otherwise very tasty.
Also our most successful rugby league team’s name was given as a derogatory put down: “Rabbitoh”, which was seen as a poor sales person flogging rabbit meat for money
South Sydney being a poor area, yielded the South Sydney Rabbitohs
Since their introduction for a spot of recreational hunting, European rabbits have had a devastating effect on the ecology of Australia in general. Hence the Rabbit-Proof Fence, and its corresponding novel and film.
> Rabbit starvation (also called protein poisoning or mal de caribou)
The body can only digest so much protein and rabbits are so lean there is basically no fat to them outside their organs.
That seems a reasonable estimate to me even today.
At one of my ancestral villages in Galicia, rabbit empanada is also a thing, and tastes amazing. But it's seen less and less often because it's messy to eat (it's cooked with bones so you have to open the empanada, remove the bones and close it again) so people tend to use fillings without that problem now.
Only recipe I've seen was indeed a stew where the ingredients were almost "one rabbit, unholy amounts of garlic".
First time I heard of rabbit being considered to taste like chicken, they taste nothing alike.
The guys from Fallow made a video on YouTube about attempting to make a really good one.
Apparently Lapin à la Moutarde is the classic rabbit dish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJtdtekV7xo
Let's just say it didn't make me want to try rabbit any time soon.
This also works for goat or sheep meat.
South Sydney being a poor area, yielded the South Sydney Rabbitohs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_Concerning_Diet_and_Ap...
Above is a Wikipedia article about that law. And here is a direct link to the text of that 1363 law:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000017915496&seq=...