Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with rabbit, forcemeat, eggs, and stock, topped with flaky crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rabbit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,448 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the rabbit and cut it into small joints.

  2. Use butter instead of suet to make the forcemeat and shape it into tiny balls.

Assemble

  1. Season the rabbit and arrange it in a dish with the forcemeat and ham cut into small squares.

  2. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into small pieces and pile them on top.

Bake

  1. Pour in the stock, cover with flaky crust, and bake for 2 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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rabbit + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together441 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the pie and supplies the meat.
Veal forcemeat
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firmness and richness to the filling.
Stock
Provides moisture that keeps the filling juicy as it bakes.
Flaky pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns into a crisp top.

The step that matters

Pour in the stock, cover with flaky crust, and bake for 2 hours.. The stock must go in before the crust is sealed so the meat cooks in liquid. The sealed crust traps steam during the long bake, which keeps the rabbit moist while it cooks through.

“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.

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes