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Dessert

Pie Plant Pie

A rhubarb pie baked with sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pie Plant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA very quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the rhubarb and let it stand for 10 minutes.

  2. Dredge the rhubarb lightly with flour.

  3. In a 10‑inch pie plate, combine the rhubarb and sugar.

  4. Dot with butter cut into pea‑sized pieces.

Bake

  1. Cover and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for the first 10 minutes.

  2. Reduce the temperature to 350°F (175°C) and continue baking for about 30 minutes until done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + rhubarbtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Supplies the tart flavor and the juicy body of the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances rhubarb's sharp acidity and helps draw out juices.
Flour
Coats the rhubarb and thickens its released juices into a filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Dredging the rhubarb with flour. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid as it cooks. A light, even coating of flour lets that juice thicken into a set filling; too little leaves it runny, and too much can make it pasty.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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.

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