Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Pie

A savory pie with rabbit, bacon or ham, hard‑boiled egg yolks, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. 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. Skin and prepare the rabbits; bone them and cut into neat pieces.

Make the gravy

  1. Stew the bones and trimmings with nutmeg, mace, onion, herbs, pepper, and salt for about 1 hour.

  2. Strain the liquid to make gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the rabbit pieces with bacon or ham and yolks of hard-boiled eggs, seasoning between layers.

  2. Pour the gravy over the layered rabbit.

  3. Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  4. If serving cold, add a little gelatine to the 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the pie, providing the meat that the filling is built around.
Bacon or ham
Adds savoury fat and salty flavour that moistens the lean rabbit meat as it bakes.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly texture to the layered filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky crust that browns in the oven and seals the pie.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled gravy to a jelly, helping the pie hold together when served cold.

The step that matters

Straining the gravy after stewing. Straining removes bone fragments and solids so the gravy is smooth and clear. Lean rabbit dries out easily, so the gravy must be ready and poured over the layers to keep the filling moist as it bakes.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pepper, nutmeg, onion, ham, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, nutmeg, onion, ham, egg. 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.

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes