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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie with rabbit, bacon, herbs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,351 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. In a mortar, bruise the bacon with the livers, pepper, salt, mace, parsley, chives, and basil until fine.

  2. Make a pie crust and cover the bottom of the pie dish with the seasoning.

  3. Add the rabbit pieces and cover them with more crushed bacon mixed with fresh butter.

  4. Top with thin slices of bacon, cover with the pie lid, and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the lid, take out the bacon, and skim off the fat.

  2. If there's not enough gravy, add boiling hot mutton or veal 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. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Chive + basiltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, becoming tender during the long, slow bake.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the rabbit as it cooks.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the crushed bacon layer over the rabbit.
Mutton or veal gravy
Adds moisture and body to the filling if there is not enough liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pepper, parsley, chive, basil, butter, mutton):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, parsley, chive, basil, butter, mutton. 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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