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Rabbit Pot Pie

A pot pie with rabbit, butter, flour, and pie crust, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rabbit Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Season the rabbit pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Line the sides of a pot with pie crust dough.

  3. Add the seasoned rabbit and butter pieces rolled in flour.

  4. Roll out more dough, cut into 3‑inch squares, and place over the rabbit.

  5. Pour in enough water to cover the rabbit.

  6. Roll out a sheet of dough for the top, leaving a center opening.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the pot with a lid and cook slowly until the rabbit is done.

  2. If the gravy is too thin, add more butter rolled in flour.

  3. Once done, place the soft crust from the bottom of the dish on a plate, add the rabbit, and top with the brown crust.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, covered cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and flour-coated butter helps thicken the gravy.
Flour
Coats the butter and rabbit so the cooking liquid thickens into a gravy.
Pie crust dough
Forms the lining and top crust that enclose the rabbit and soften in the steam.

The step that matters

Adding more butter rolled in flour to the gravy. If the gravy is too thin, flour-coated butter thickens it as it melts into the liquid. Adding it too quickly or without the lid's steam trapped can leave the gravy watery or lumpy.

“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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