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Rabbit Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,351 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bruise the bacon with the livers, pepper, salt, mace, parsley, chives, and basil in a mortar until fine.

  2. Make a pastry and cover the bottom of a pie dish with the seasoning.

  3. Add the quartered rabbits on top of the seasoning.

  4. Pound more bacon with fresh butter and cover the rabbits with this mixture.

  5. Lay thin slices of bacon over the top.

  6. Remove the lid when done, take out the bacon, and skim off the fat.

  7. If there isn't enough gravy, pour in boiling hot mutton or veal gravy.

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. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Chive + basiltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pepper, parsley, chive, basil, butter, mutton):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, parsley, chive, basil, butter, mutton. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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