222 THE RABBIT 



CHAPTER IX 



THE COOKERY OF THE RABBIT 



By Alexander Innes Shand 



The rabbit is a most useful and respectable animal, 

 yet his merits have been unfairly ignored, simply 

 because he is cheap and common. Almost unknown 

 to the menus of the modern haute cuisine, we suspect 

 that, as the conger eel often does duty for turtle, he 

 has figured anonymously in dishes of world-wide 

 reputation. To take a single example : we have good 

 reason to surmise that he often served for the founda- 

 tion of the famous pofage a la Bagration, the secret 

 of which was religiously kept by the defunct Freres 

 Proven^aux of the Palais Royal. That most seductive 

 of soups was supposed to be based upon sweetbreads 

 or chicken. A casual indiscretion leads us to believe 

 that the rabbit entered largely into its composition, 

 but the invaluable recipe is probably irrecoverable. 

 While the Provengal brothers flourished, and since 

 their demise, ' Bagration ' has been paraded in many 

 a bill of fare, but neither at the Old Philippe's, nor 



