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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with rabbit, onions, olives, and a browned flour sauce, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

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. Soak the rabbit pieces in salt water for 30 minutes.

  2. Wipe and rub the rabbit with lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Make several cuts in the thick meat for seasoning to penetrate.

Cook the rabbit

  1. Place the rabbit in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and add bay leaf, peppercorns, mace, and sliced onions.

  2. Cook slowly until the meat is tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once cool, layer the meat in a buttered bake‑dish with sliced boiled eggs, minced olives, and parboiled young onions.

  2. Thicken the cooking liquid with browned flour and strain it over the meat, ensuring it is moist.

  3. Cover the dish with pastry and make a wide cut in the center.

  4. Bake covered at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, then uncover to 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, moist cooking.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a moist gravy that binds the layers.
Boiled eggs
Add a soft, rich texture and mild body to the filling.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and filling.

The step that matters

Slow cooking of the rabbit. Cooking gently in cold-started water lets connective tissue break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender rather than tough and stringy. Rapid boiling toughens muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, lemon, pepper, onion, egg, olive, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, lemon, pepper, onion, egg, olive, flour. 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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