Name: Rabbit Pie
Ingredients: thin slices of veal; pepper; coarse sea salt; good white stock; 2 rabbits (backs and legs only); fine herbs; hard-boiled eggs (sliced); ham or bacon (sliced)

Why it works: Rabbit and ham work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 273 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Line a dish with thin slices of veal and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Add good white stock to the dish.
Fillet the rabbits, using only the backs and legs, and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and fine herbs.
Arrange alternating rows of rabbit meat, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and rolls of ham or bacon in the dish.
Fill the dish with more good white stock.
Cover and cook according to the directions for Beefsteak Pie.

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.

Rabbit + hamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together273 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + rabbittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together441 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).
Pepper + rabbittop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,334 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).