They were a common protein source when I was growing up in Ukraine, I'd venture to say similar in neighboring countries.
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...
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?
> 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
> 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
Look at the spelling: it would have rhymed with 'honey'. It's a pretty common phenomenon: we (Americans anyway) don't talk about 'cocks' and 'asses' anymore, we have roosters and donkeys.
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.
Shakespeare played with this intentionally, and repeatedly. He uses conies and cony in multiple plays. One example, Henry VI, Part III, act 1 (beginning of play) he stages a battle and the capture of one noble in the civil war in the scene where famously later he calls the queen dowager "she-wolf of France"... widow of his hero Henry V of Agincourt fame. Reading the play today it seems just a dry history and bunch of pompous nobles prattling on an on with allusions to ancient Greece and Rome etc. But on stage with raunchy actors, the word cony (meaning: coney, rabbit) is surrounded in this scene by about ten different sex and genitalia words. And in the middle of the scene -- where somebody is about to die -- they stop the historical military action and have a sex-word raunchy poetry slam:
"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"
Chicken/pullet seems to have gone the opposite way: pullet (French) is exclusively for the animal but chicken (Germanic) can be either the animal or its meat.
Is chicken really German though? A hen is called "Huhn" (Das Huhn), and chicken may be more appropriately translated as "Geflügel" (or rather, the latter would be poultry; chicken would be "Huhn" or "Hähnchen"). I don't see the germanic origin insinuated here for the word "chicken", whereas I do so it for "hen" <- "Huhn" quite easily. (And "Geflügel" has "Flügel" which relates more easily to flight/to fly, or better Flügel=wing).
Wiktionary [0] seems pretty confident ("Germanic" includes all of the languages below, not just modern German).
[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”).
In the same family of languages (proto-germanic), you'll have Swedish for which the word for the meat is "kyckling" which more pronounced like "chickling".
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.
Sounds very french-like in origin. Do all in Switzerland use that though? Even the exclusively german-speaking part? In Austria there is a West-East difference, some words spoken by the Vorarlbergers (most western part) we don't too easily understand in the east (it's quite similar to swiss-german in some ways in the western area, but not identical either).
As a foreigner, “Pouletschenkel und Pommes” makes me smile. A German word sandwiched between two French words - one pronounced the French way (“poolay”) and the other nativized (“pommez”).
"Poultry" includes all domesticated birds, including ducks and geese. So it is a different type of word than "chicken" which refers to a specific species.
This is false actually. The article OP linked is wrong or incomplete. The Romans brought and bred huge numbers of rabbits to Britain, for eating.
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."
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?
I find it hard to believe that the romans didn't bring rabbits with them. Also, given the fullness of time, it is hard to believe that rabbits didn't ever catch a ride with any number of pre-roman visitors.
The European rabbit seems to be in fact two different species. In 2026 it was proposed to split it in Iberian rabbit from West Spain and Portugal, and European rabbit from East Spain and the rest of Europe. Both were isolated in the glaciation in opposite coins of Spain and the split is supported by genetic analysis and Iberian has a darker fur. They had barely interbred since 2 million years ago.
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.
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?
Maltese thick rabbit stew (think: ragu) is delicious. And as mentioned in a parallel thread, hare is fairly common in Finland as well.
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.
> First time I heard of rabbit being considered to taste like chicken, they taste nothing alike.
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.
There is some base to it. Chicken breast and rabbit are both very lean therefore lacking the fat which gives it the distinctive flavor of the animal. All lean meat basically tastes the same.
Around Lisbon, it's usually stewed with red wine and tomato and spices (coelho à caçador). It can also be fried or grilled but I rarely see it cooked that way.
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.
My mother made rabbit stew once or twice that I can remember. I remember liking it OK, but it was nothing spectacular.
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.
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 from Murcia with no chicken, but more rabbit, called just "rice with rabbit", and IMHO it's even better (https://okdiario.com/recetas/arroz-conejo-murcia-2538513). 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. (You can cook it without the bones, there are also areas where they do that, but in that specific area they shun that variant).
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.
Brunswick stew is hearty[0], usually rabbit or squirrel traditionally, but these days with chicken. The Maltese variety as mentioned elsewhere is called Stuffat Tal Fenek as is very nice, having tried it in Malta.
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.
My favorite is mustard rabbit (Lapin à la moutarde). It's basically rabbit stewed in white wine, cream or butter and mustard. Mustards helps make a really thick sauce and you can use a copious amount since its flavor mellows down when you cook it.
You can coat the rabbit meat with Dijon mustard and cook it to make "Lapin à la moutarde" too!
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!
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".
Interesting: I had it one time in San Francisco and cannot remember what it tasted like, but I remember the dish was a dark red. I'd really like to try it again, but I've never seen it on a menu since.
(I ordered it because of my rule: If I see an animal on a menu that I haven't eaten before, I order it.)
Lapin à la moutarde (Rabbit in a mustard sauce - Burgundian dish) - not sure you can say the rabbit is as front and center as you’d like - but my favorite preparation served with a starch - get the boneless loin.
Honestly fried rabbit legs (southern style fried chicken but rabbit essentially) is also pretty good.
There's the traditional German rabbit/hare stew Hasenpfeffer (literally "hare pepper" as hare or rabbit and pepper are the main ingrediants). You may remember it as the dish at least one of Bugs Bunny's foes wanted to make from him.
I used to get it at Cafe Brussels in Houston. They used to have a dish with braised rabbit leg called Le Lapin aux Pruneaux. Instead of a beer stew they made it sweet and savory with prunes, raisins, onions, and carrots. Sooooo goooood.
It used to be more common in the U.K. but it’s pretty rare now. Stews and braising were the traditional way to cook it as older ones are kind of tough.
I am curious if anyone here has experience with the best breeds of rabbit for meat that's are also the most easily self sufficient. (Reliable litters, surviving mostly on grass in rabbit tractors)
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.
We've raised meat rabbits for years, among other overstock.
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
(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)
Rabbit used to be the meat of the poor where I grew up. If you could not afford meat (beef/pork), you could always raise 5 to 10 rabbits in boxes in your garden and feed them with the grass from the road sides.
I have lived in many cities across different countries with dramatically varying economies, and the price of chicken has always been a good proxy for the cost of living. And maintains the same ratio to the price of a bus ticket (and similar things).
In the rural UK area where I live farmers will often be happy to have you shoot them with an airgun, if you seek permission. Nice (if stewed) cheap meat.
> (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.
You have to shoot them in the head, just aft of the eyes. About a 1 inch diameter target. That always kills them.
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.
Price of chicken dropped steeply (and consumption exploded) in the second half of the 20th century after the introduction of broiler breeds and what’s essentially muscle tissue factories. Before that chicken was neither particularly cheap nor eaten that much.
Rabbit is comparatively cheap to produce, and available at low price wherever it is produced in larger quantities. Apparently no significant economies of scale where you live.
Rabbits were a depression-era food for Australians and was always considered a poor people's food. Being a pest does give make it popular either, much the same as carp is. Which is a shame, as both make great sources of cheap food.
Growing up in rural Australia I remember eating rabbit as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. One of my favourite meals was a sweet rabbit curry with rice that Mum used to make. Haven't eaten it in probably close to 40 years and my salivary gland is activated right now as I type this.
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.
> Hence the Rabbit-Proof Fence, and its corresponding novel and film.
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.
Interestingly enough, since I was wholly ignorant of much of Australia's history, I only became aware of the rabbit infestation and devastation because I noticed the title of the film. I have neither seen the film, read the novel, nor been to Australia at all. Thanks though.
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!!
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 :)
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.
How is that an example of burying the lead? (I presume lede is the correct spelling, but burying lead for others to find in their drinking water amuses me.)
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".
Though lede is just a variation of the word lead to get a unique word for the leading section of an article. As long as we all agree that it's pronounced like in leading and not like the metal the difference in spelling doesn't feel significant
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.
Are you referring to the Allotments Act 1950? If so, that doesn't necessarily extend to private gardens. Plenty of places will have byelaws or covenants that prevent the keeping of animals in garden.
Yes. The Allotments Act 1950 covers everything and is designed to override any covenants or tenancy terms preventing you from keeping rabbits and hens (with caveats about welfare, H&S, and nuisance).
IANAL, but my understanding is that a byelaw may not overrule or contradict statute law, either.
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.
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?
You realise that rabbits were once so rare in Australia they had to be introduced to salve the British passion for killing small things?
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.
If true, there was a time when they were so rare as to be non existent.
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 was an interstitial period of decreasing rarity.
Rabbits also happen to be an excellent source of protein for other animals. This helps keep the rabbit population under control in healthy ecosystems.
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.
> modern Britain were probably much more eager to hunt and eat rabbits than modern Australians are.
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.
"late medieval and early modern" = some time between the Plague and the industrial revolution.
"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.
We're more or less in agreement, sure - I'm certain that Australians and Britains were equally eager to eat rabbits (during those times when that was a thing), the substantive difference being very few people in a vast land (AU) versus a mass of people in a pocket square of an island group (UK).
Did you eat them as a kid too? Growing up in rural Australia, I regularly ate rabbit in the late 70s and early 80s. It's been a while since I've had one though.
Scotland at least needs the return to the native European Lynx since long time ago. Sheep are what prevents it, but it could help to put some order in the populations of rabbits, vampire deer, roe deer and red foxes.
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.
They were a common protein source when I was growing up in Ukraine, I'd venture to say similar in neighboring countries.
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.
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?
Yes, cony: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cony#English
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."
I'm guessing it's a cognate with the Spanish word for rabbit (conejo)?
From Latin via Anglo-French and Old French, but the Spanish also derives from the Latin. https://www.etymonline.com/word/coney
more likely from old french "conin"
"Conin" derives from "coniculus", which is what "conejo" derives from, so that makes all three words cognates, since they share a common origin.
Sure enough that means Coney Island is in fact "Rabbit Island"
Yep first thing I thought too
> 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
So hares are the locals and rabbits are the French immigrants
Hares were also introduced.
The mountain hare (Lepus timidus) is native to England. Brown hare (Lepus europaeus) was introduced.
Instruction on recognizing the bun [the scientific term] and their ranks: https://m.xkcd.com/1682/
Sequels include bun alert: https://m.xkcd.com/1871/
And bun trend: https://m.xkcd.com/1903/
The reason it got "lost":
> 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
That claim doesn't seem to be sourced. It sounds a little dubious to me.
Look at the spelling: it would have rhymed with 'honey'. It's a pretty common phenomenon: we (Americans anyway) don't talk about 'cocks' and 'asses' anymore, we have roosters and donkeys.
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.
Well America doesn't even have any tits. The whole of Europe has great tits. Blue tits, too.
If I remember my college lit classes correctly the original root would have been spoke with the /qu/ sound, like in quiver.
Quiver is another slang word like coney. Same as purse, O, No-Thing (thing being penis, Nothing means vagina), or all the bird ones. Nest is charming.
Shakespeare played with this intentionally, and repeatedly. He uses conies and cony in multiple plays. One example, Henry VI, Part III, act 1 (beginning of play) he stages a battle and the capture of one noble in the civil war in the scene where famously later he calls the queen dowager "she-wolf of France"... widow of his hero Henry V of Agincourt fame. Reading the play today it seems just a dry history and bunch of pompous nobles prattling on an on with allusions to ancient Greece and Rome etc. But on stage with raunchy actors, the word cony (meaning: coney, rabbit) is surrounded in this scene by about ten different sex and genitalia words. And in the middle of the scene -- where somebody is about to die -- they stop the historical military action and have a sex-word raunchy poetry slam:
"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"
I can't put a fork in the fox,.it's wrapped in a sheet by the beach beyond the dam.
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See also "Welsh rabbit" which is even more confusing.
It's spelled Rarebit, not rabbit
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/welsh-r...
"rarebit is a later folk-etymological variant"
Chicken/poultry?
Chicken/pullet seems to have gone the opposite way: pullet (French) is exclusively for the animal but chicken (Germanic) can be either the animal or its meat.
Is chicken really German though? A hen is called "Huhn" (Das Huhn), and chicken may be more appropriately translated as "Geflügel" (or rather, the latter would be poultry; chicken would be "Huhn" or "Hähnchen"). I don't see the germanic origin insinuated here for the word "chicken", whereas I do so it for "hen" <- "Huhn" quite easily. (And "Geflügel" has "Flügel" which relates more easily to flight/to fly, or better Flügel=wing).
Wiktionary [0] seems pretty confident ("Germanic" includes all of the languages below, not just modern German).
[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”).
In German, you can also use the word Küken, which is very clearly a cognate of English chicken.
Know this song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Yce3AxF9c
I did not, do you know this one: https://youtu.be/Ppm5_AGtbTo?is=JXIEHIckWMhcfmUP
Also bonus one: https://youtu.be/miomuSGoPzI?is=IpXvzjGRIswRjUsv
Oh my dirndl. I am now a fan of Heidis Küken and I will be carefully studying vocabulary with them.
Here is Die Sauerkrauts, presenting the Chicken Dance: https://youtu.be/jJcCwbV5kp8?is=Ug4EqlKjN2o9xjBe
In the same family of languages (proto-germanic), you'll have Swedish for which the word for the meat is "kyckling" which more pronounced like "chickling".
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.
Funnily enough in Switzerland they use "Poulet" to mean exclusively chicken meat.
Sounds very french-like in origin. Do all in Switzerland use that though? Even the exclusively german-speaking part? In Austria there is a West-East difference, some words spoken by the Vorarlbergers (most western part) we don't too easily understand in the east (it's quite similar to swiss-german in some ways in the western area, but not identical either).
Yes, the GP was referring about Swiss German. Not sure if it's used in all the dialects, but at least Züritüütsch uses it.
But you're right it's most likely a much more recent import from French, just like "velo", "merci" and others.
As a foreigner, “Pouletschenkel und Pommes” makes me smile. A German word sandwiched between two French words - one pronounced the French way (“poolay”) and the other nativized (“pommez”).
"Poultry" includes all domesticated birds, including ducks and geese. So it is a different type of word than "chicken" which refers to a specific species.
We did get poultry from French poulet
The introduction of rabbits to England post-dates the Norman conquest.
And the word rabbit comes there from french rabotte which however comes in turn from a Germanic language (dutch) so it doesn't feel quite french.
This is false actually. The article OP linked is wrong or incomplete. The Romans brought and bred huge numbers of rabbits to Britain, for eating.
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?
Right, commoners would initially only have known them as exotic burrowing hares.
I find it hard to believe that the romans didn't bring rabbits with them. Also, given the fullness of time, it is hard to believe that rabbits didn't ever catch a ride with any number of pre-roman visitors.
This contradicts the article.
Sam Gamgee goes and gets a brace of coneys
The European rabbit seems to be in fact two different species. In 2026 it was proposed to split it in Iberian rabbit from West Spain and Portugal, and European rabbit from East Spain and the rest of Europe. Both were isolated in the glaciation in opposite coins of Spain and the split is supported by genetic analysis and Iberian has a darker fur. They had barely interbred since 2 million years ago.
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.
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?
Rabbit is a pretty important part of traditional Maltese cuisine, rabbit stew is often considered a national dish, fried rabbit is also fairly common.
First time I heard of rabbit being considered to taste like chicken, they taste nothing alike.
Maltese thick rabbit stew (think: ragu) is delicious. And as mentioned in a parallel thread, hare is fairly common in Finland as well.
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.
> First time I heard of rabbit being considered to taste like chicken, they taste nothing alike.
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.
There is some base to it. Chicken breast and rabbit are both very lean therefore lacking the fat which gives it the distinctive flavor of the animal. All lean meat basically tastes the same.
At least the rabbit I have had tasted nothing like chicken.
Around Lisbon, it's usually stewed with red wine and tomato and spices (coelho à caçador). It can also be fried or grilled but I rarely see it cooked that way.
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.
[1]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/imK78soKt6ruLNZH6
My mother made rabbit stew once or twice that I can remember. I remember liking it OK, but it was nothing spectacular.
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.
Paella is commonly made with rabbit in Spain.
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 from Murcia with no chicken, but more rabbit, called just "rice with rabbit", and IMHO it's even better (https://okdiario.com/recetas/arroz-conejo-murcia-2538513). 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. (You can cook it without the bones, there are also areas where they do that, but in that specific area they shun that variant).
had rabbit paella in a small town outside Valencia. it was so delicious!
Rabbits are mainly native to the Iberian Peninsula.
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.
Within Europe, you mean? A quick Google suggest there were native rabbits also in the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
Brunswick stew is hearty[0], usually rabbit or squirrel traditionally, but these days with chicken. The Maltese variety as mentioned elsewhere is called Stuffat Tal Fenek as is very nice, having tried it in Malta.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_stew
It's quite common in Spain, in my family we eat that ~6 times a year. Honestly delicious, but I understand why people won't eat it.
> is there any knock-your-socks-off dish
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.
My favorite is mustard rabbit (Lapin à la moutarde). It's basically rabbit stewed in white wine, cream or butter and mustard. Mustards helps make a really thick sauce and you can use a copious amount since its flavor mellows down when you cook it.
You can coat the rabbit meat with Dijon mustard and cook it to make "Lapin à la moutarde" too!
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!
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".
Lapin aux pruneaux is a wonderful dish. Serve with salad and mashed potato or french fries
https://bordeauxkitchen.com/rabbit-with-prunes-lapin-aux-pru...
Interesting: I had it one time in San Francisco and cannot remember what it tasted like, but I remember the dish was a dark red. I'd really like to try it again, but I've never seen it on a menu since.
(I ordered it because of my rule: If I see an animal on a menu that I haven't eaten before, I order it.)
Lapin à la moutarde (Rabbit in a mustard sauce - Burgundian dish) - not sure you can say the rabbit is as front and center as you’d like - but my favorite preparation served with a starch - get the boneless loin.
Honestly fried rabbit legs (southern style fried chicken but rabbit essentially) is also pretty good.
I like Sichuan's Zigong 冷吃兔 (cold-eaten rabbit)! Fried rabbit, dried chillies and numbing Sichuan pepper. Unforgettable.
That sounds amazing.
There's the traditional German rabbit/hare stew Hasenpfeffer (literally "hare pepper" as hare or rabbit and pepper are the main ingrediants). You may remember it as the dish at least one of Bugs Bunny's foes wanted to make from him.
I used to get it at Cafe Brussels in Houston. They used to have a dish with braised rabbit leg called Le Lapin aux Pruneaux. Instead of a beer stew they made it sweet and savory with prunes, raisins, onions, and carrots. Sooooo goooood.
My granny in Hungary always cooked it like your regular chicken soup (consomme) but of course replacing the chicken with rabbit
Like this https://streetkitchen.hu/receptek/nyulhusleves
Hmm. It's made me think about Lièvre à la Royale (Hare à la Royale), but of course Hares are not rabbits (they taste gamier).
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.
It used to be more common in the U.K. but it’s pretty rare now. Stews and braising were the traditional way to cook it as older ones are kind of tough.
Confit or cassoulet.
In oven with potatoes!
rabbit stew
I am curious if anyone here has experience with the best breeds of rabbit for meat that's are also the most easily self sufficient. (Reliable litters, surviving mostly on grass in rabbit tractors)
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.
We've raised meat rabbits for years, among other overstock.
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
A decade ago... https://www.npr.org/2007/01/16/6865800/big-german-bunnies-ma...
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)
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It's says Rabbit was 4-5 times the price of chicken.
That seems a reasonable estimate to me even today.
Rabbit used to be the meat of the poor where I grew up. If you could not afford meat (beef/pork), you could always raise 5 to 10 rabbits in boxes in your garden and feed them with the grass from the road sides.
I have lived in many cities across different countries with dramatically varying economies, and the price of chicken has always been a good proxy for the cost of living. And maintains the same ratio to the price of a bus ticket (and similar things).
Does this phenomenon have a name?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index is the closest i can think of offhand
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In the rural UK area where I live farmers will often be happy to have you shoot them with an airgun, if you seek permission. Nice (if stewed) cheap meat.
Farmers in England and Wales have a legal obligation to remove rabbits. You are doing them a favor by volunteering to do so.
No they don't, legal citation needed if you are going to claim this.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/2-3/68
> (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.
Yes, they absolutely do. Since 1954's pests act.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rabbits-how-to-control-numbers
Goodness, I don't imagine a regular airgun is humane for rabbits? The FAC limit is 12ftlb?
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.
You have to shoot them in the head, just aft of the eyes. About a 1 inch diameter target. That always kills them.
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.
You can also use blunted arrows to knock them out. Don't know about the humane aspect.
Don't think bow and arrow hunting is legal in any way in the UK.
Really. Didn’t think that still stood, re: kings’s deer, a shame. Bows miss more than rifles.
Price of chicken dropped steeply (and consumption exploded) in the second half of the 20th century after the introduction of broiler breeds and what’s essentially muscle tissue factories. Before that chicken was neither particularly cheap nor eaten that much.
A chicken in every pot
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruse...
Rabbit is comparatively cheap to produce, and available at low price wherever it is produced in larger quantities. Apparently no significant economies of scale where you live.
Rabbits were a common staple food source in Australia until 1950s when the myxoma virus was released which causes the disease myxomatosis.
Rabbits were a depression-era food for Australians and was always considered a poor people's food. Being a pest does give make it popular either, much the same as carp is. Which is a shame, as both make great sources of cheap food.
Growing up in rural Australia I remember eating rabbit as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. One of my favourite meals was a sweet rabbit curry with rice that Mum used to make. Haven't eaten it in probably close to 40 years and my salivary gland is activated right now as I type this.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia
> Hence the Rabbit-Proof Fence, and its corresponding novel and film.
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.
Interestingly enough, since I was wholly ignorant of much of Australia's history, I only became aware of the rabbit infestation and devastation because I noticed the title of the film. I have neither seen the film, read the novel, nor been to Australia at all. Thanks though.
Quite a contrast with the story
Lobster was once considered only fit for prisoners and poor people (due to being a bottom feeder).
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!!
I was surprised to learn that this has a name (or a few)
> 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.
Sadly omitted from this epicurial review: the ill-starred Bunny Burgers fast food franchise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F8JN1tlXHo
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 :)
Recently stumbled across this cooking video featuring chefs trying to recreate Michelin recipes. Lièvre à la Royale (Royal Hare).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJtdtekV7xo
Let's just say it didn't make me want to try rabbit any time soon.
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.
How is that an example of burying the lead? (I presume lede is the correct spelling, but burying lead for others to find in their drinking water amuses me.)
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".
More of a venison issue. Lede evolved from lead to avoid exactly this confusion, sometime last century.
*lede, since we are already in academic language-and-culture details territory.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/bury-the-lede-versu...
Though lede is just a variation of the word lead to get a unique word for the leading section of an article. As long as we all agree that it's pronounced like in leading and not like the metal the difference in spelling doesn't feel significant
Rabbit is very commonplace where I live, but I haven't tried it, it just looks to much like a rodent.
I have tried it in a French restaurant and it was delicious. Just don't think about how cute it would have been to cuddle instead. :-(
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.
This also works for goat or sheep meat.
There’s a paywall to the link within the article about the 1363 law regarding clothing.
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=...
The royals owe us money.
And now in the UK you are entitled by law to keep rabbits and hens in your garden. A law inherited from post-WWII rationing.
Are you referring to the Allotments Act 1950? If so, that doesn't necessarily extend to private gardens. Plenty of places will have byelaws or covenants that prevent the keeping of animals in garden.
Yes. The Allotments Act 1950 covers everything and is designed to override any covenants or tenancy terms preventing you from keeping rabbits and hens (with caveats about welfare, H&S, and nuisance). IANAL, but my understanding is that a byelaw may not overrule or contradict statute law, either.
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.
This sounds like absolute horseshit to me.
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.
You realise that rabbits were once so rare in Australia they had to be introduced to salve the British passion for killing small things?
The article claims:
If true, there was a time when they were so rare as to be non existent.From that time, until at most 1555 when:
there was an interstitial period of decreasing rarity.Rabbits also happen to be an excellent source of protein for other animals. This helps keep the rabbit population under control in healthy ecosystems.
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.
> modern Britain were probably much more eager to hunt and eat rabbits than modern Australians are.
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.
"late medieval and early modern" = some time between the Plague and the industrial revolution.
"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.
We're more or less in agreement, sure - I'm certain that Australians and Britains were equally eager to eat rabbits (during those times when that was a thing), the substantive difference being very few people in a vast land (AU) versus a mass of people in a pocket square of an island group (UK).
Did you eat them as a kid too? Growing up in rural Australia, I regularly ate rabbit in the late 70s and early 80s. It's been a while since I've had one though.
Pretty much - along with fresh and salt water fish, food from the garden, kangaroo, lamb, mutton, sometimes beef, etc - the usual staples ;-)
I remember wild mushrooms, yabbies, eels as well. Prawning with my grandfather in a saltwater lagoon using hand nets and a hurricane lantern.
Scotland at least needs the return to the native European Lynx since long time ago. Sheep are what prevents it, but it could help to put some order in the populations of rabbits, vampire deer, roe deer and red foxes.
>You realise that rabbits were once so rare in Australia they had to be introduced to salve the British passion for killing small things?
There were no rabbits in Australia, until they were introduced by humans (intentionally or otherwise).
Intentionally
~ https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/rabbits-in...as were pigs, dogs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels, cane toads, cats and other fauna (and flora and funga).