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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with rabbit, pork, eggs, and spices, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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. Cut the rabbits and soak them in a mixture of salt and water for 30 minutes.

  2. Stew the rabbits in enough water to cover them until they are half cooked.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a deep dish, layer bits of pork, rabbit, slices of boiled egg, salt, pepper, butter, mace, and lemon juice.

  2. Repeat the layering until all ingredients are used.

  3. Pour in the cooking liquid from the rabbits, thickened with a little flour.

  4. Cover with puff pastry.

  5. Cut a slit in the middle.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  2. If the top browns too quickly, cover it with a paper or a tin plate.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender when partly stewed before baking.
Fat pork
Adds fat and richness, keeping the meat moist as it bakes.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, sliced texture inside the pie.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that binds the layers.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Partly stewing the rabbit before baking. Rabbit is lean and dries out easily. Stewing it until half cooked softens the meat so it finishes tender in the oven rather than tough and dry.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, egg, pepper, butter, lemon, 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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