alt Hacker NewsRabbits were a medieval royal luxury in England until the Black Death
Comments
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?
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.
It's says Rabbit was 4-5 times the price of chicken.
That seems a reasonable estimate to me even today.
Rabbits were a common staple food source in Australia until 1950s when the myxoma virus was released which causes the disease myxomatosis.
Sadly omitted from this epicurial review: the ill-starred Bunny Burgers fast food franchise.
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.
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 :)
Rabbit is very commonplace where I live, but I haven't tried it, it just looks to much like a rodent.
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.
The royals owe us money.
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.
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=...
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?