I remember the taste to be nothing spectacular, it's not venison, if anything I prefer poultry. Anything can taste well enough with butter and garlic. Rabbit is commonly available in my local LatAm and Eastern European stores in Miami, but I don't crave it. Lamb on the other hand...
Most winter hats were made from their fur - Ушанка - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushanka
These were disposable items, the fur wore out very quickly. One per winter if memory serves.
See also the note at rabbit: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rabbit#English apparently rabbits themselves are all French. "hare is indeed inherited from Proto-Germanic."
> the similarity to cunt (and particularly homophony with cunny) led through taboo avoidance both to the word's displacement in the main by rabbit and bunny
Sequels include bun alert: https://m.xkcd.com/1871/
And bun trend: https://m.xkcd.com/1903/
We know people are them because when the Romans left ("dark ages") they were eaten to extinction:
"Butchered hare and chicken bones appear in the archaeological record hundreds of years later, among Roman-period food waste. At this time, Sykes said, hares were farmed for food, and the Romans introduced rabbits to the island, although hares and chickens continued to hold religious associations for Britons. After the Romans withdrew from Britain in A.D. 410, the populations of hares and chickens crashed, Sykes said, and rabbits went extinct."
Source: https://archaeology.org/news/2020/04/10/200413-britain-hares...
So what is going on in medieval times, centuries later, is they are being re introduced and horded by the Anglonorman aristocracy. This could simply be because, of course, half of England then is in today's France. The Plantagenet dynasty is even more French than the earlier Normans, who are of course mostly ex-Vikings. Later, at peak, the "English" Angevin dynasty territories stretch south from say Calais all the way thru Occ country to the Basques; and are intermarried with Spain and France. There's rabbits everywhere, trivial to bring back to Britain.
But they were apparently difficult and expensive to farm (which seems crazy as they breed like... rabbits) but this is perhaps explained by climate change-- the medieval warm period was about 950-1250 and then it began to get much colder. For example by 1315-1317 there was horrific famine caused by crop failures and abnormal cold summers. In this context the rich people are laboriously farming rabbits in artificial warrens inside of managed game preserves and poor hungry people get executed all the time for eating.
A good book for this era is Tuchman's 'Distant Mirror' which is like Game Of Thrones meets zombie apocalypse. Don't read it if you're French. It may be the reputational nadir of French civilization?
Essentially the best for self sufficient homesteading. I wouldn't want the cornish cross equivalent that strugles to propagate without care, needs bags of feed or dies if you look at it funny.
Depending on where you live, a New Zealand/California mix is about as good as you can get for meat rabbits. They grow well and aren't overly delicate.
If you live somewhere with wild heat waves, just straight Californias, or some of the custom breeds from Texas A&M would be better to avoid heat deaths.
Also, you can just feed them grass in rabbit tractors, but they won't thrive like if they had access to a more varied diet. That's for all rabbits, not just meat rabbits
The ones in the story might be be Flemish or Continental https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_Giant_rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Giant_rabbit
Though, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altex_rabbit might be the choice if you're after "grow quick for meat".
(I have no experience with livestock, there was a story about this on NPR a while back... I wonder what breeds that was... oh, there's another large meat focused bread in the US to consider)
That seems a reasonable estimate to me even today.
Does this phenomenon have a name?
We used to use a tight .410 which I think humanely dispatched them but I think an air gun would be much better for the meat.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruse...
South Sydney being a poor area, yielded the South Sydney Rabbitohs
You do realise, one hopes, the novel slash film have FA to do with either rabbits or any rabbit related ecological devastation.
The fence served as a navigational aid for a long journey home, had it not existed Daisy, Molly, and Gracie would have had to fall back on the Seven Sisters for directions.
> 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJtdtekV7xo
Let's just say it didn't make me want to try rabbit any time soon.
EDIT: saw the picture and yes. That certainly was catchy, but I the hn title is missing the subtitle: "until the black death made them commonplace".
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/bury-the-lede-versu...
This also works for goat or sheep meat.
So we know now that moving European rabbits for hunting purposes to Portugal, Malaga or Galicia may be a menace for Iberian Rabbit.
USA has the cotton tail rabbits on genus Sylvilagus that was the original carrier of Myxomathosis virus. They live in swamps and forests.
Rabbit is more "lamb" than "chicken" but none of both. It does not have a strong flavor really. Is a common dish in the Mediterranean and is tasty. Its main problems are the splinter bones that can damage a tooth, and its unappealing look in the butcher shop.
Guinea pig should be similar. More fatty maybe. Very popular in South America, but I never ate those.
12 Abolition of contractual restrictions on keeping hens and rabbits.
(1) Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in any lease or tenancy or in any covenant, contract or undertaking relating to the use to be made of any land, it shall be lawful for the occupier of any land to keep, otherwise than by way of trade or business, hens or rabbits in any place on the land and to erect or place and maintain such buildings or structures on the land as reasonably necessary for that purpose:
Provided that nothing in this subsection shall authorise any hens or rabbits to be kept in such a place or in such a manner as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance or affect the operation of any enactment.
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=...
You're trying to say that rabbits - which breed so rapidly that we actually use the phrase "breeds like rabbits" in just about every language across the planet - were somehow a rare luxury?
Rabbits, that left unchecked will breed like crazy across any grassy-ish space that you have and which can be caught with only slightly more difficulty than for example rocks and fallen branches?
These were a rare luxury, somehow?
Bollocks they were.
The article claims:
The European rabbit is a common sight in the British countryside today.
Yet it was not always so. They are not native to the British Isles and are one of the most devastating invasive species.
From that time, until at most 1555 when:
... the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner could write that "there are few countries wherein coneys (rabbits) do not breed, but the most plenty of all is in England."
There were no rabbits in Australia, until they were introduced by humans (intentionally or otherwise).
Unlike Australia, Britain had wolves and foxes for a long time. Not to mention the apex predator, Homo sapiens, who in late medieval and early modern Britain were probably much more eager to hunt and eat rabbits than modern Australians are.
First time I heard of rabbit being considered to taste like chicken, they taste nothing alike.
The meat is gamey and indeed very lean, but when you slow cook it to the point where it falls off the bone... yum. Tends to work better with roasted potatoes than mash.
They don't. It's just a reference to the standing joke that any meat that is unfamiliar "tastes like chicken" as a generic way of describing meat taste.
It's the kind of meat that is, generally speaking, better prepared in more rustic versions as you move inland, though -- see e.g. [1], where it's cooked in clay, together with kidneys, heart, liver, and the head.
With the price of meat I've given some thought to keeping rabbits and/or chickens but it's likely not worth the effort unless you truly cannot afford meat any other way.
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. (You can cook it without the bones, there are also areas where they do that, but in that specific area they shun that variant).
you need an example of what you consider such a dish.
Rabbits are pretty decent, as a kid we used to have quite a few of them at the village (along with all other kind of animals, incl. lambs, pigs, and goats). Either way it's rather easy to tell the meat apart and most meat(s) can be prepared to be delicious.
It's not a knock-your-socks-off dish, I don't think the meat has enough qualities for such a dish (not enough of a distinct taste or texture or quantity), but it's always nice to have!
https://bordeauxkitchen.com/rabbit-with-prunes-lapin-aux-pru...
Only recipe I've seen was indeed a stew where the ingredients were almost "one rabbit, unholy amounts of garlic".
(I ordered it because of my rule: If I see an animal on a menu that I haven't eaten before, I order it.)
Honestly fried rabbit legs (southern style fried chicken but rabbit essentially) is also pretty good.
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.
On Christmas day 1859 Thomas Austin, a self-made wealthy settler, released 13 European wild rabbits on his estate, Winchelsea, Barwon Park, Victoria. They had been specially collected and sent to him by a relative in England.
... To put the dissemination into context, the spread of rabbits over Britain took 700 years while the colonisation of two-thirds of Australia, an area 25 times the size of Britain, took only 50 years. The rate of spread of the rabbit in Australia was the fastest of a colonising mammal anywhere in the world.
as were pigs, dogs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels, cane toads, cats and other fauna (and flora and funga).
> Coney Island gets its name most likely from the Dutch settlers who called it Conijnen Eylandt or Konijn Eylandt, meaning "Rabbit Island", because the area once had a large population of wild rabbits
> (2)The occupier of any land in a rabbit clearance area shall take such steps as may from time to time be necessary for the killing or taking of wild rabbits living on or resorting to the land
IIRC all of England and Wales is designated a Rabbit Clearance Area.
"rarebit is a later folk-etymological variant"
But if you miss, either by poor shooting or because they bob their head just as you shoot, then they often run off and you never find them. I reckon I get >> 90% kill rate, but that still means a few get away and suffer from the wound.
The OED has a pronunciation history:
The usual current pronunciation with long ō ( /əʊ/ ) seems to have become established during the course of the 19th cent., and may in part be a spelling pronunciation reflecting the rarity of the word in general use in standard English at this date, when it may have been most familiar to many from use in the Bible (and especially in the Psalms) as the name of a foreign animal. However, this pronunciation is likely to have been reinforced by the desire to avoid association with 'cunt' and related words (compare 'cunny'), especially in a religious context.
"Lord Clifford. I will not bandy with thee word for word, But buckle with thee blows, twice two for one"
Here it may be helpful to imagine peak Tupac vs Biggie, throwing shade.
On the one hand, Shakespeare has to get the play text as written approved by humorless puritanical, literally Puritan censors and the actual Archbishop. So he can't say the c-word or make jokes about giant dongs. But, on the other hand, he does. By leaving it to the innate intelligence of the audience to grok the double entendres even in the middle of a civil war. (There are many other examples in other plays that are less subtle, but this particular one is clearly written for the actors to ham it up on stage).
In one scene we get:
"And full as oft came Edward to my side, With purple falchion painted to the hilt"
"I am your butt, and I abide your shot"
(Note here Shakespear is actually mocking queen Elizabeth's minister IRL, Robert Cecil, who was hunchbacked, by making this hunchbacked character Richard of Gloucester ie the later super-ugly evil king Richard III... who is so ugly women cross the street and dogs bark at him... ahem, prefer the company of men and abide their shot as the literal butt of the butt joke. Simultaneously, Cecil's IRL first cousin Sir Francis Bacon also preferred the company of his male servants and is perhaps the actual crown prosecutor responsible for everything from slander or libel to state executions. Another writer, the perfectly-named John Stubbs, recently had his right hand amputated for slut shaming the queen herself ("a gaping gulf"). So this is not dull. It's high stakes!
[Footnote: Separately, plays and allusions to Edward II or Richard II are always about male favourites getting special access to the king. This becomes scandalous during the reign of James, who was notorious for err granting root access privileges; this led to fair questions later about who was the biological father of Queen Anne's son Charles, then duke of York-- for whom New York is named ever since. James himself was the "butt" of the same jokes, as it was not clear who his father was either, and Henry IV of France mocked him as "Solomon" ie the son of David, his mother's Italian lover, David Rizzio, whose root-access was suddenly terminated in 1566.]
"made an evening at the noontide prick"
"My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth A bird that will revenge" (this is played straight these days but in Elizabethan times and in her actual presence, this is a triple double entendre where ashes is enunciated as 'asses' ; Phoenix is one of the queen's personal metaphors for herself, sewn into her clothes, printed in her designs, worn as a jewel etc ; and bringing forth the revenge bird is yes vanilla the mythical phoenix coming back from the dead... but bird in this era allows the actors/company to play this scene with bird=cock or bird=woman, which still exists in slang today. Here noted in passing when the bird is a Quail, that's always a prostitute joke, which then you want to look for dunks nearby about somebody Burning with crotch-Pox which is STD jokes again about Robert Cecil among others who have sexually transmitted diseases which are serious in era of no antibiotics... in the public theater with randos in the audience this is played for laughs, but in a private court performance with the queen or later king James present this is mocking specific courtiers whom everybody at court already knows have one or more super gross STDs)
"I will not bandy with thee word for word, But buckle with thee blows, twice two for one."
Bandy from the French bander, 'to stretch/erect/thrust' & buckle, colloquially to couple and mate. This works because it's plausibly deniable for the censors and conservative audiences, but the actors can play it for raunchy laughs when they want. Like the entire scene. Note also this begs the question if the "two for one" is a threesome joke, and invites contemplation who was known for the best parties back in the day when two-on-one happened twice, or more exotically, whatever a fivesome is called (twice two 'for' one).
In case the subtext isn't clear enough or you don't want to believe Elizabethan Catholic poets liked to mock humorless Puritan censors, in rapid fire the scene continues with:
#prick #finger #wound (contemporary slang for vag.) #thrust #"spurn" which Shakespear also uses in some weird ways in other plays eg "spurn me like (your) spaniel" so could be a other raunchy slang word we have lost since #so strives the woodcock" #"so struggles the cony"
And the glorious: "triumph thieves upon their conquer'd booty"
Modern as in today or modern as in, say 1940s?
I can state as a fact that here in Australia my father, born 1935 and still alive and within 20 feet as I type, kept his mother and younger siblings alive by snaring, trapping, and shooting rabbits through the WWII years his father was overseas in North Africa and Europe.
Further, the bulk of the non native population in Australia until recently was essentially composed of "modern Britains" who were so eager to hunt rabbits they're insisted on bringing their cursed invasives here.
The root of the issue here was more the sparse numbers of people hunting rabbits and the vastness of the space sans people the rabbits had for expansion.
Not even the dingos and European introduced foxes in Australia had sufficient numbers to make a dent.
Although it has spawned a lot of papers on cat, fox, dingo, rabbit, bilby, quokka population dynamics and predator - prey cycles.
"modern" = after the industrial revolution, which implies broad availability of farmed meat, leading to a gradual decline of hunting.
Yes, predation is a major factor in rabbit population control. And I'm counting British people as formidable rabbit killers, so I think we're in agreement there.
But you're right it's most likely a much more recent import from French, just like "velo", "merci" and others.
[0] From Middle English chiken (also as chike > English chick), from Old English ċicen, ċycen (“chicken”), of uncertain origin. Possibly from Proto-West Germanic kiukīn (“chicken”), or alternatively from Proto-West Germanic kukkīn, equivalent to cock + -en.
Compare North Frisian schückling (“chicken”), Saterland Frisian Sjuuken (“chicken”), Dutch kuiken (“chick, chicken”), German Low German Küken (“chick”), whence German Küken (“chick”), (elevated, obsolete) German Küchlein (“chick”) and Old Norse kjúklingr (“chicken”).
Modern German might have changed along the way, but if you go back far enough, there should be something. I'm not a linguist or a native speaker of a Proto-Germanic language, so I don't know enough to pinpoint this better.
Know this song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Yce3AxF9c
Also bonus one: https://youtu.be/miomuSGoPzI?is=IpXvzjGRIswRjUsv
Here is Die Sauerkrauts, presenting the Chicken Dance: https://youtu.be/jJcCwbV5kp8?is=Ug4EqlKjN2o9xjBe