If you find some field mushrooms, don’t use them for this soup but cook them as Alexis Soyer recommended in his Shilling Cookery for the People: on toast, with thick cream. But this is a very good recipe for the mushrooms you buy, rather than pick.
You will need:
350g mushrooms
60g butter
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1tbsp parsley, chopped Grated nutmeg
Thick slice of white or wholemeal bread, with the crusts removed
850ml of stock
100ml cream
Salt and pepper
For the stock — which, if you are efficient, you will have put to simmer the night before when you jointed the rabbit — put the rabbit ribs and other trimmings into a large pan with a carrot, an onion, bay leaf, stick of celery, thyme, salt and pepper. Cover with water and simmer for an hour or so, until it has a good flavour.
METHOD: Rinse the mushrooms, wipe and trim the ends of the stalks, then cut into small pieces. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, put in the mushrooms and let them soften. Soak the bread in a little of the stock. When the juice begins to run from the mushrooms, add the garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, a little nutmeg and stew for a few minutes more.
Squeeze out the bread and add to the mushrooms. Stir until the bread is amalgamated, then add the stock. Cook for about 15 minutes, then liquidise the soup, which will end up the consistency of thin cream, with little grainy particles of mushroom suspended in it. Return to the saucepan, add the cream, check the seasoning, then serve with more finely chopped parsley. Serve with crusty bread and butter. If just soup for supper strikes you as a bit too slimming, afterwards you could serve a beautiful bit of British cheese with oat cakes, plums and Kent cob nuts.