[Sca-cooks] [late response] hares & rabbits & conies oh my!

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

This is a message that got lost somewhere and just surfaced in my email...
if anyone still cares...

> Well, they're two different species, although very similar in appearance.

Ok, basically we gotcha European Rabbits, we gotcha hares, we gotcha
American Rabbits (aka Cottontail rabbits) and we gotcha pikas.

Now, pikas, being excessively cute little beasties with big round ears
commonly found making hay in mountainous regions in Asia, aren't really
germane to European cooking... but they sometimes are called conies.

Hares (as someone said) are native to Europe including England though the
jackrabbit is an American hare. They are born with their eyes open and
with fur and hares don't dig burrows-- they just make 'forms' to lay in at
night or for their babies (and hare separate their babies into different
sites after they are born). Hares generally have longer legs and longer
ears than the other species.

European rabbits are burrowing social mammals (see Watership Down for a
fanciful treatment of their social lives, but there are a number of good
non-fiction books on it too). Their babies are born hairless and blind.
Pet rabbits are European rabbits. Rabbits raised for food are European
rabbits. Rabbits were not native to England and were imported there,
theoretically kept in 'warrens' on the properties of the rich, and they
were a luxury food. As far as I can tell from reading, a cony is a
European rabbit most of the time. (Though there's some wierd
interpretations of 'cony' by 19th century animal naming conventions, so
it's not a sure bet.)

American rabbits/Cottontails (you know, the kind most of us Easterners
find in our gardens) aren't either hares or rabbits, being as they don't
dig burrows but their babies are born blind and hairless. They often feed
in social clusters but are also found as individuals.

So: in general, I'm told that hare meat is going to be longer, tougher and
stringier than rabbit meat, and I believe it is darker: i.e. more gamey.
Rabbit (which you get from the butcher or a breeder or grow your own) is
generally going to be plumper, with more short fibers in the meat because
of the way the animal is made. Cottontail, if someone bags one for you or
you hunt 'em yourself, is going to be somewhere in between.

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
	"Index your brain."