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Rabbit Pot Pie

A stew of rabbit pieces covered with pie crust and butter, cooked slowly in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Season the rabbit pieces with salt and pepper.

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

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

  4. Roll out some dough, cut it into 3‑inch squares, and place them in the pot with the rabbit.

  5. Pour in enough water to cover the rabbit.

  6. Roll out a sheet of dough and place it on top, leaving an opening in the center.

Cook

  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.

Serve

  1. Once done, place the soft crust at the bottom of a dish, add the rabbit, and top with the brown crust, brown side up.

  2. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

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 in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the gravy.
Flour
Coats the rabbit and butter to help thicken the gravy as it cooks.
Pie crust dough
Forms the crust layers that soften in the gravy and brown on top.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly until the rabbit is done. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry and tough if cooked too fast or too hot. Gentle, moist heat under a lid breaks down connective tissue slowly and keeps the meat tender.

“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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