THE COOKERY OF THE RABBIT 235 



over, he was what the cooks of our middle classes 

 call a company dish. At the grand feast given at 

 the installation of the youngest brother of ' the King- 

 maker' as Archbishop of York, in 1467, 4,000 rabbits 

 appear in the bill of fare, taking immediate precedence 

 of as many heronshaws. Archer, in his ' Highways 

 of Letters,' describing ordinary dinners in the time of 

 Chaucer, begins with a pottage, called ' buckernade,' 

 made of fowl or rabbit, cut up fine and stewed, as 

 was the fashion then, with a diabolical variety of 

 spices. The rabbit seems only to have lost caste 

 with the change of dynasty on the demise of Queen 

 Anne ; for the ' rabbit tart ' was a standing dish on 

 the table of Her gouty Majesty, who was a noted 

 gourmande and a voracious eater. In ' The Noble 

 Boke of Cookry for a Prynce's Houseolde or any other 

 estately houseolde,' which must have been written 

 about the time of the great Neville banquet, rabbits 

 are always set down in the services for the cooler 

 months. Curiously enough, they seem generally to 

 have been spitted — for, as we have said, a rabbit has 

 no fat, and roasting is the worst use he can be put to. 

 To make him tolerably succulent he must be elabo- 

 rately basted. And no such careful basting could be 

 practicable in the case of cooking four thousand 



