Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with rabbit, bacon or pickled pork, beefsteak, stock, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash the rabbit and cut it into small joints.

  2. Slice the beef into thin pieces and dice the pork.

  3. Layer the rabbit, beef, and pork in a pie dish, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper.

  4. Fill the dish three-quarters full with stock.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 2 hours until the pastry rises and sets.

  2. Add the remaining hot stock to the pie before serving.

  3. For a cold pie, add forcemeat balls and hard-boiled eggs for improvement.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long baking.
Beefsteak
Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the filling.
Bacon or pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the meat and filling.
Stock
Supplies moisture that cooks the meat and later fills the pie with savoury liquid.
Short crust or puff pastry
Forms the enclosing crust that rises and sets over the filling.

The step that matters

Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 2 hours until the pastry rises and sets.. Baking long enough lets the pastry set and brown fully while the meat cooks through; underbaking leaves the crust soggy and the filling raw.

“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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes