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Dessert

Rhubarb Cheesecake

A baked cheesecake made with stewed rhubarb, lemon juice, rind, sugar, eggs, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Cheesecake

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.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the rhubarb until soft, then beat it well with a fork and drain all the liquid away.

  2. Add the lemon juice, lemon rind, and sugar to the rhubarb.

  3. Mix in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared pie crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 main tart flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Set as they bake, binding the filling into a sliceable custard.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma from the juice and rind.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sourness of the rhubarb.
Prepared pie crust
Holds the filling in shape while it bakes.

The step that matters

Drain all the liquid away from the rhubarb. Excess liquid from the stewed rhubarb thins the egg mixture and can keep it from setting firmly. Removing it helps the filling bake into a sliceable texture rather than a runny one.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg. 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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