Name: Rabbit Pie
Ingredients: rich biscuit dough; 1 rabbit; salt; pepper; butter

Why it works: Biscuit and pepper work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 841 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

Line a deep dish with rich biscuit dough.
Stew the rabbit and season well with salt, pepper, and butter.
Place the rabbit in the dish and cover with a top crust.

Bake

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Biscuit + rabbittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,448 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,009 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,334 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich biscuit dough: Forms the rich crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Rabbit: Provides the main meat filling; stewing it first cooks it through before baking.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and flavor to the stewed rabbit.

“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.