Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Tart

A tart made with rhubarb, puff pastry, sugar, ginger, lemon peel, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rhubarb Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie dish with puff pastry.

Fill and bake

  1. Cut the rhubarb into very small pieces and fill the pie dish.

  2. Add sugar to taste, ground ginger, grated lemon peel, and orange juice.

  3. Bake in the oven until the rhubarb is tender.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Forms the main filling and softens into a tender, tart fruit layer when baked.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky base that holds the filling in the pie dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the rhubarb.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus flavour that brightens the filling.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, lemon, orange):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, lemon, orange. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesRhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipes