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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with rabbit quarters, bacon, livers, and herbs, topped with bacon and baked.

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 seasoning

  1. Combine bruised bacon, rabbit livers, pepper, salt, parsley, mace, and sweet basil in a mortar; beat until fine.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with crust and add a layer of the seasoning mixture at the bottom.

  2. Place the rabbit pieces on top of the seasoning.

  3. Mix more bruised bacon with fresh butter and spread it over the rabbit.

  4. Cover with thin slices of bacon and place the top crust on the pie.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

  2. Once baked, remove the top crust, take out the bacon, skim off the fat, and add gravy if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rabbit + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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, slow baking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that moistens the lean rabbit meat as it bakes.
Rabbit livers
Add a rich, deep flavour and a fine, savoury body to the seasoning mixture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bacon layer, carrying flavour through the meat.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling, holding in moisture and forming the pie's structure.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after baking. Rendered fat collects on top of the pie during baking. Skimming it off before serving keeps the dish from tasting greasy and lets any added gravy set cleanly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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