Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A pie made with finely cut rhubarb, sugar, optional flour, and pie crust.

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

Why it works: Rhubarb and flour 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

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 deep dishes with pie crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill each dish with the cut rhubarb, heaping it in the center.

  2. Sprinkle 5 heaping tablespoons of sugar over the rhubarb.

  3. If the rhubarb is very young, add 1 teaspoon of flour.

  4. Cover with another layer of pie crust and bake until golden.

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.

  1. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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 filling that forms the body of the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps draw out juices as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the rhubarb so the filling sets rather than running.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding flour to very young rhubarb. Young rhubarb releases more liquid while baking, so the flour is needed to thicken the juices. Without it the filling can run and make the bottom crust soggy.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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 pie recipes

Strawberry 5 See all 198 →

You might also like

Rhubarb MarmaladeRhubarb Marmalade35 recipesRhubarb JellyRhubarb Jelly28 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes