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Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with rabbit, bacon, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbit Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. If using a fresh rabbit, cut it into neat joints and soak in tepid water for 20 minutes.

  2. If using tinned rabbit, carefully turn it out of the tin.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the rabbit in a pie dish.

  2. Cut the bacon into small pieces and add to the dish with the rabbit.

  3. Dust lightly with nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Half fill the dish with cold water.

  5. Cover with pie crust.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Rabbit + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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 gives the pie its meaty texture.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that carries into the rabbit and the cooking liquid.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven, forming the top of the pie.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper. 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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