Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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 rabbit
Cut the rabbit into eight pieces and soak in salted water for 30 minutes.
Stew the rabbit in enough water to cover it until half done.
Assemble the pie
Layer slices of salt pork in the bottom of a pie dish, followed by a layer of rabbit pieces.
Add slices of boiled egg, season with pepper and dot with butter.
Sprinkle a little mace and add a few drops of lemon juice on each piece of meat.
Repeat layering until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of bacon on top.
Pour in the reserved stewing water and add a little flour to thicken.
Bake
Cover with puff pastry, cut a slit in the middle, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour, covering with paper if it browns too quickly.
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.
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Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together832 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,067 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
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 through stewing and baking.
- Hard-boiled egg
- Adds richness and body to the filling as it is layered through the pie.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, helping the filling taste rounded and savory.
- Flour
- Thickens the reserved stewing liquid so it binds into a spoonable filling.
- Puff pastry
- Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals and browns over the filling.
- Salt pork
- Adds salty, fatty flavor that seasons the rabbit and melts into the filling.
The step that matters
Covering with paper if the crust browns too quickly. Puff pastry browns faster than the filling heats through, so a loose paper cover slows surface browning while the interior finishes cooking and the pastry stays golden rather than scorched.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pork, egg, lemon, pepper, butter, flour):
- Parsleyfits better
- Thymefits better
- Sagefits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, egg, lemon, pepper, butter, 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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