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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with rabbit, bacon, mushroom ketchup, and gravy, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the rabbit pieces with white pepper and mace.

  2. Place the seasoned rabbit in a dish with the bacon.

  3. Add the mushroom ketchup and a little gravy.

Bake

  1. Cover the dish with pastry.

  2. Bake until the pastry is golden and the filling is cooked through.

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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Rabbit + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + ketchuptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mace + mushroomtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the filling and becomes tender as it cooks through.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour that seasons the meat as it renders.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the filling.
Pastry
Forms a crisp cover that browns in the oven and seals in the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until the filling is cooked through. Pastry browns on the outside before the filling inside is fully cooked. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry if overcooked, so check that the meat is tender and cooked through before serving.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, mace, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, mace, mushroom, ketchup. 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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