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Rabbit Pot Pie

A pot pie made with rabbit, butter, flour, dough crust, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rabbit Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the rabbit pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Line the sides of a pot with the dough crust.

  3. Add the seasoned rabbit and butter pieces rolled in flour.

  4. Roll out some dough, cut into 3‑inch squares, and place on top of the rabbit.

  5. Pour in enough water to cover the rabbit.

  6. Roll out another sheet of dough and place it on top, leaving a center opening.

Cook

  1. Cover the pot with a lid and cook slowly until the rabbit is done.

  2. If the gravy is too thin, add more butter rolled in flour towards the end of cooking.

Serve

  1. Once done, place the soft crust at the bottom of a dish, add the rabbit, and top with the brown crust, brown side up.

  2. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, covered cooking in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and when rolled in flour it helps thicken the gravy.
Flour
Coats the butter and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Dough
Forms the crust, lining the pot and covering the rabbit so the pie holds together.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on and cook slowly. Slow, covered cooking in water lets the connective tissue in the rabbit break down gently, making the meat tender. Fast or high heat can toughen the meat and dry out the liquid before it is done.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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