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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with rabbit, bacon, and beef, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make the pie crust using flour and clarified dripping as you would for other meat pies.

  2. Wash the rabbit in cold water, dry it, and cut it into neat pieces.

  3. Slice the bacon or salt pork.

  4. Cut the beef steak into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the rabbit, bacon, and beef in a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle with parsley, salt, and pepper, then add cold water or stock.

  3. Cover the pie and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1½ to 2 hours, depending on the age of the rabbit.

  4. Check occasionally and turn to prevent burning.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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, covered baking.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavour that moistens the meat as it cooks.
Beef steak
Adds extra meaty flavour and body to the filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pie crust once baked.
Clarified dripping
Adds fat to the crust, giving it a tender, short texture.

The step that matters

Checking and turning the pie during baking. The time depends on the rabbit's age, so the pie can dry out or scorch if left unchecked. Checking and turning it helps the bake cook evenly and prevents burning.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pork, beef, pepper, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, beef, pepper, flour. 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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