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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with rabbit, salt pork, hard-boiled eggs, and flaky pastry, baked with stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the rabbit into neat joints.

  2. Mix a little pepper, salt, and flour.

  3. Roll each joint in the flour mixture.

Assemble the pie

  1. Place the rabbit joints alternately with the pork and hard-boiled eggs in a pie dish.

  2. Pour in the stock.

  3. Line the edges and cover the pie with pastry.

  4. Brush the top with the beaten egg and decorate as desired.

  5. Make a hole in the middle for ventilation.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ hours.

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. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 during the long oven cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the rabbit as it cooks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliced texture inside the pie.
Flaky pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Stock
Supplies moisture that cooks the filling and forms the juices inside the pie.
Beaten egg
Gives the top crust a glossy, golden browned finish.

The step that matters

Make a hole in the middle for ventilation. Steam builds up inside a sealed pie as the stock heats. Without a vent, pressure can lift or split the pastry lid, and the juices may leak out instead of staying in the filling.

“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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