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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie with rabbit, beef, bacon or pickled pork, stock, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit and cut it into small joints.

  2. Cut the beef into thin slices and dice the pork.

Assemble

  1. Layer the rabbit, beef, and pork in a pie dish, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper.

  2. Fill the dish three-quarters full with stock.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 2 hours until the pastry is risen and set.

  2. Add the remaining hot stock to the pie before serving.

  3. For a cold pie, consider adding forcemeat balls and hard-boiled eggs for improvement.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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 and savoury during long baking.
Beef steak
Adds meaty flavour and firmer texture that holds its shape in the filling.
Bacon or pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that enriches the meat filling.
Stock
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour that keeps the filling juicy as it cooks.
Pastry
Forms the crust, whose fat and structure give a flaky, set top over the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until the meat and pastry are fully cooked. The meat needs sustained oven heat to become tender and fully cooked through, and the pastry needs to rise and set. Underbaking leaves the meat tough or undercooked and the crust pale and soggy.

“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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