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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with rabbit, boiled pork, eggs, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, and stock, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Soak the rabbits in warm water for 1 hour, then rinse well.

  2. Place the rabbits in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove the rabbits and rinse them in cold water.

  4. Return the rabbits to the saucepan, cover with cold water, season with pepper and salt, and add an onion if desired.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the rabbits, cut the meat from the bones, and return the bones to the saucepan.

  7. Cut the boiled pork into small pieces and slice the hard-boiled eggs.

  8. Bring the stock with the bones to a boil.

  9. Prepare the puff pastry.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer rabbit meat, bacon, and egg in a pie dish, seasoning each layer with parsley, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Add ½ pint of the boiling stock to the dish.

  3. Roll out the pastry to ¼ inch thickness.

  4. Wet the edges of the pie dish, cut a strip of pastry, and place it around the edge.

  5. Wet the top of the edging, cover the pie with another layer of pastry, trim the edges, and make a hole in the center.

  6. Brush the top with a beaten egg and decorate with pastry leaves and patterns.

  7. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 45 minutes, until the pastry is risen and golden.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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 is cooked until tender and then cut from the bones.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling as sliced layers.
Boiled pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling as small pieces.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp, golden crust that rises in the oven.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the filling under the pastry.

The step that matters

Adding the stock and sealing the pastry. Stock poured in before the pastry is sealed keeps the filling moist as it bakes. Sealing the edges well stops steam and juices escaping, so the crust can puff properly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, egg, parsley, pepper. 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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