Name: Rabbit Pie
Ingredients: 1 rabbit; ½ cup seasoned stock; pepper; coarse sea salt; powdered clove; butter; flour; currant jelly

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the rabbit and season the inside with pepper, coarse sea salt, and powdered clove.
Prepare the rabbit for roasting by skewering the head back and the legs on each side.
Cover with buttered paper and roast for 1 hour.
Remove the paper 15 minutes before it's done, dredge with flour, and brown.
If serving cold, dissolve a little gelatine in the seasoned stock and pour it into the pie when done.

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.

Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Clove + curranttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,038 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,671 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

Swap the currant

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

Lemonfits better
Raisinfits better
Mangofits better
Currantthe original

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