Skip to main content
Main

A Cornish Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with rabbit, beef, pickled pork, onions, parsley, eggs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Cornish Rabbit Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut off the legs and shoulders of the rabbit and cut the back into four pieces.

  2. Split the head and stew it in ¾ cup of water with the beef and shallot.

Assemble

  1. Place sliced pickled pork at the bottom of a dish.

  2. Strew chopped roasted onion and parsley over the pork.

  3. Add a layer of rabbit and fill gaps with hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Cover with another layer of pickled pork, parsley, and eggs, then add another layer of rabbit.

  5. Moisten with 1 cup of cold water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1 hour.

  2. Cut around the top of the crust and pour in the gravy made with the head and ½ pint of warm cream.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Lean meat that forms the main body of the pie.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, fatty flavour that seasons the meat layers.
Hard-boiled eggs
Fill the gaps between layers and help hold the filling together.
Beef
Adds savoury depth to the stewed liquor that becomes the gravy.
Warm cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the gravy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, beef, shallot, pork, onion, egg, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, beef, shallot, pork, onion, egg, cream. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes