Type | Savoury pie |
---|---|
Main ingredients | Rabbit, onions, celery and carrots |
Rabbit pie is a game pie consisting of rabbit meat in a gravy with other ingredients (typically onions, celery and carrots) enclosed in a pastry crust.[1] Rabbit pie is part of traditional American and English cuisine.[2] It has recently found renewed popularity.[3]
Wild rabbit, as opposed to farmed, is most often used as it is easily and affordably obtained, and is described as more flavoursome.[4]
Along with rabbit meat, ingredients of the filling of a rabbit pie typically include onions, celery and carrots.[5][6][7] Other ingredients may include prunes,[7][8] bacon[6][7] and cider.[5][6] Australian recipes for rabbit pie sometimes include the food paste Vegemite as an ingredient.[9]
Rabbit pie was a staple dish of the American pioneers.[10] Thanks to the increasing demand for wild and fresh ingredients, rabbit pie is often seen on the menus of fashionable restaurants and gastropubs.[11]
Two huge rabbit pies are part of traditional Easter celebrations in the English village of Hallaton, Leicestershire.[12]
In Beatrix Potter's children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Peter Rabbit and his siblings are warned "[not to] go into Mr. McGregor's garden" because their father "had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor."[13]
"Rabbit pie day" is ostensibly invoked in the song Run, Rabbit, Run.