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Sauce

Rhubarb Sauce

A sweet sauce made from rhubarb, raisins, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rhubarb into 1-inch pieces and mix with the sugar.

  2. Let it stand overnight.

Cook

  1. Drain off the juice and boil it for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the rhubarb, stoned raisins, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Add a little preserved ginger just before finishing.

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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Rhubarb + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 bulk of the sauce and its tart flavour and body as it breaks down.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and draws juice out of the rhubarb during standing.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft, chewy pieces that contrast with the rhubarb.
Lemons
Add acidity to balance the sugar and aromatic oils from the rind.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 1 hour. Gentle heat lets the rhubarb soften and the liquid reduce and thicken evenly. Fast boiling with this much sugar can scorch the bottom of the pan and make the sauce taste burnt.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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