Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Rhubarb

A preserve made by boiling rhubarb with sugar and ginger until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rhubarb and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Preserve Rhubarb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the rhubarb into 2-inch lengths.

  2. Combine the rhubarb with 1 pound of sugar in an earthenware pan and let it sit overnight.

Make the preserves

  1. The next day, pour off the syrup and boil it with the remaining sugar until it thickens.

  2. Add the rhubarb and sliced ginger to the syrup.

  3. Boil gently for 1.5 hours, being careful not to overcook or it will become candied.

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. Rhubarb + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rhubarb + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Ginger + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the fruit body and tart flavor that the sugar balances.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out its moisture to form the thick syrup.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the preserves.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 1.5 hours. Prolonged heating concentrates the sugar and softens the rhubarb's structure. Overcooking breaks the fruit down too far, so it turns candied and loses its shape and fresh tartness.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rhubarb, sugar, almond):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, almond. 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.

More rhubarb preserves recipes

Spiced 3 See all 12 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesRhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes