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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie made with rabbit joints, livers, bacon, oysters, herbs, and a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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 rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit joints in lukewarm salt water to cleanse them.

  2. Dry the rabbit joints with a cloth.

  3. Flour and season the rabbit with cayenne and coarse sea salt.

  4. Arrange the rabbit in a pie dish.

Make the filling

  1. Parboil the livers.

  2. Mash the livers with bacon, oysters, herbs, parsley, a dust of flour, breadcrumbs, and the egg to form small balls.

  3. Distribute the balls and the pieces of pickled pork in the dish.

  4. Grate nutmeg over the mixture.

  5. Add port wine and water.

Bake

  1. Cover the mixture with a thick pastry crust.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Place buttered paper over the crust to prevent over-browning.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,255 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the lean meat that becomes tender during long baking inside the pie.
Livers
Give the forcemeat a rich, dense texture and deep flavour.
Egg
Binds the mashed livers and breadcrumbs so they hold together as balls.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help the liver mixture hold its shape.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and savoury.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma and moistens the filling as it cooks.

The step that matters

Place buttered paper over the crust. The pastry browns quickly in a hot oven, so covering it late in baking helps prevent it from darkening or burning before the filling is cooked through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, flour, pepper, liver, oyster, egg, pork):

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, pepper, liver, oyster, egg, pork. 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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