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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with rabbit, ham or bacon, eggs, gravy, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the rabbit from the tin and take out the bones.

  2. Layer the rabbit in a pie dish and season well.

  3. Add a layer of ham or bacon cut into small pieces.

  4. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and add them on top.

  5. Fill the dish with more rabbit, season again, and pour in the gravy.

  6. Form the forcemeat into balls and distribute them among the rabbit.

  7. Add a sprinkle of grated lemon on top.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the edges of the dish with a strip of puff pastry.

  2. Cut out a top for the pie and place it on ornamentally.

  3. Brush the crust with beaten egg and bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Rabbit + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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
Forms the main meat filling, giving the pie its body and savoury flavour.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat to the rich meat filling.
Puff pastry
Bakes into a flaky, layered crust that encloses the filling.
Eggs
Sliced hard-boiled eggs add firm texture; a beaten egg glazes the crust for browning.
Veal forcemeat
Forms tender, moist balls that add richness throughout the filling.
Gravy
Keeps the filling moist and carries flavour through the pie as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until done. The rabbit and forcemeat sit under a sealed pastry lid, so their doneness cannot be seen easily. They must be cooked through at the stated oven heat, since undercooked meat is unsafe to eat and the pastry can brown before the centre is ready.

“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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