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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with boiled bacon, rabbit livers, pepper, salt, mace, parsley, eschalot, and optional ham or bacon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. 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 force-meat

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, pound the boiled bacon with the rabbit livers until smooth.

  3. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, pounded mace, chopped parsley, and eschalot. Mix thoroughly.

  4. Spread the force-meat mixture on the bottom of a pie dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the rabbit pieces on top and layer with thin slices of ham or bacon if desired.

  2. Bake for 2 hours.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boiled bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the force-meat moist and rich.
Rabbit livers
Form the smooth, rich base of the force-meat, giving it body and a deep meaty flavour.
Eschalot
Adds a mild, sweet onion aroma to the force-meat.
Pounded mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Pounding the bacon and livers until smooth. Thorough pounding breaks the liver and bacon into a fine, even paste. Lumps or coarse pieces leave a grainy texture, and an evenly blended mixture bakes into a uniformly smooth force-meat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, rabbit, pepper, parsley, shallot, ham. 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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