Name: Rhubarb Pie
Ingredients: Pastry for pie crust; Flour for sprinkling; 4 cups peeled rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces; 1 cup sugar

Why it works: Flour and rhubarb match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Pastry for pie crust
Flour for sprinkling
4 cups peeled rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup sugar

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.

Assemble

Line a pie pan with pastry and sprinkle lightly with flour.
Fill the pan with the rhubarb pieces and sprinkle with flour.
Add the sugar on top of the rhubarb.

Bake

Cover with the top crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 minutes to 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Flour + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together670 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb: Provides the tart flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps draw out juices as it bakes.
Flour: Sprinkled over the pastry and rhubarb to help thicken the juices as the pie bakes.
Pastry: Forms the crust that holds the filling and browns in the oven.