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Venison and Rabbit Pie

A pie with stewed rabbit or venison, onions, spices, and a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Venison and Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pastry

  1. Make a paste with flour and rub in butter.

  2. Add egg yolks, salt, and enough ice water to mix lightly.

Cook the filling

  1. Roll out and line a deep pie plate with the pastry.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces and place in a stew pan with onion.

  3. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and enough cold water to cover the meat.

  4. Boil until tender.

  5. Before filling the pie crust, roll some butter in flour and place over the meat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover with a thick layer of pastry and make a hole in the center of the top crust.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until nearly done.

  3. Heat port wine with cloves and mace.

  4. Pour the heated mixture into the pie through the hole in the top crust using a funnel.

  5. Brush the top of the pie with beaten egg and return to the oven until light brown.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the pastry structure that holds the filling and bakes into a crisp shell.
Butter
Creates flaky, tender layers in the pastry as it melts in the oven.
Egg yolks
Add richness and colour to the pastry and help bind the dough.
Rabbit or venison meat
Forms the savoury body of the pie, made tender by stewing first.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the stewed meat.
Beaten egg
Brushed on top, it promotes even browning and a glossy crust.

The step that matters

Mixing the pastry lightly with ice water. Overworking dough develops gluten and makes pastry tough. Cold water and light mixing keep the butter in small pieces, which melt during baking to form flaky layers.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, meat, pepper, nutmeg, port wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, meat, pepper, nutmeg, port wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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