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A Rabbit L’ie

A rabbit pie made with lard, flour, broth, morels, truffles, pounded lard, and Seville orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 300 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Rabbit L’ie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Fry rabbit pieces in lard with flour until browned.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, sweet herbs, and chives.

  3. Add broth.

  4. Let cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place in pie crust with morels, truffles, and pounded lard.

  2. Cover with pie lid and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  3. Pour in the frying sauce halfway through baking.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze in juice of Seville orange before serving.

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. Nutmeg + chivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Flour + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender and savoury as it browns and simmers.
Lard
Fat that carries flavour and helps the rabbit brown richly during frying.
Flour
Coats the rabbit and thickens the frying sauce as it cooks.
Broth
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the sauce that fills the pie.
Morels
Add earthy, aromatic flavour to the filling.
Truffles
Add a strong, aromatic earthy flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Let cool before filling the crust. If the rabbit and sauce are still hot, the pastry can soften and the fat can melt through it before baking, leaving a soggy base. Cooling the filling first helps the crust hold its structure in the oven.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, flour, pepper, nutmeg, chive, truffle):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, pepper, nutmeg, chive, truffle. 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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