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Dessert

Spiced Rhubarb

A preserved rhubarb dish flavored with sugar, vinegar, cloves, ginger, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Rhubarb

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the rhubarb

  1. Sprinkle the sliced rhubarb with 2 pounds of sugar.

  2. Let the rhubarb stand overnight.

  3. Drain the syrup into a preserve kettle.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar and 1 cup of vinegar to the syrup.

  2. Set the syrup over the fire.

  3. Tie the cloves, ginger root, and cinnamon in a muslin bag.

  4. Add the muslin bag to the syrup.

  5. Boil the syrup until it thickens.

  6. Skim out the spice.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the rhubarb to the syrup.

  2. Cook until clear.

  3. Carefully transfer the rhubarb into jars for later use.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Rhubarb + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the main body and tartness of the preserve, softening into the syrup as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps it set and preserves it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses into the syrup from the muslin bag.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that infuses into the syrup from the muslin bag.

The step that matters

Cook until clear. Rhubarb must be cooked in the thickened syrup long enough for the pieces to turn translucent and the sugar to penetrate. Stopping early leaves the fruit firm and the syrup thin, while overcooking can break the pieces down and darken the preserve.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup, vinegar, clove, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, vinegar, clove, ginger, cinnamon. 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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