Name: Rabbit Pie
Ingredients: 1 rabbit, dressed and cut up; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ small onion, chopped; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; water, as needed

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and dry the rabbit thoroughly.
In a kettle, melt the butter and sauté the onion with pepper and salt.
Brown the rabbit in the kettle.
Add enough water to cover the rabbit and stew until very tender.
Finish the dish as you would for chicken pie.

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.

Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,292 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,448 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,334 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).