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Rabbit Pie a LA Bombay

A rabbit pie with tomatoes, eggs, onions, garlic, chillies, cloves, and stock, baked under pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie a LA Bombay

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin the rabbit and cut it into neat joints.

  2. Wipe the pieces with a damp cloth and parboil in 1 pint of water.

  3. Drain the rabbit pieces and place them in a pie dish.

Layer and season

  1. Layer with sliced tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and sliced onion.

  2. Season each layer with salt, cayenne pepper, garlic, and green chillies.

  3. Add the cloves and moisten with ½ pint of stock or gravy.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with short crust or puff pastry, ornament the top, and brush with beaten egg.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1.5 hours.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 during parboiling and slow baking in the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, sliced texture between the layers of meat and vegetables.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that help flavour the meat and gravy as the pie bakes.
Stock or gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour so the filling does not dry out in the oven.
Egg, beaten
Brushed on the pastry, it promotes browning and a glossy golden finish.

The step that matters

Parboil the rabbit and drain it well. Parboiling partly cooks the meat and removes surface impurities before baking. Draining well keeps excess water from thinning the gravy and making the pastry soggy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, tomato, egg, onion, pepper, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, tomato, egg, onion, pepper, garlic. 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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