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Rhubarb Tart

A pastry tart filled with sweetened rhubarb and lemon, baked until golden.

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 Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rhubarb and cut it into small pieces, about the size of young gooseberries.

  2. Place the rhubarb in a dish and sweeten it with sifted sugar. Add the juice of a lemon and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the mixture with puff pastry.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the pastry is golden.

  3. Serve plain or with cream, similar to an apple pie.

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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

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 tart, fruity filling that forms the body of the tart.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the tart and draws moisture out of the rhubarb, softening it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the tart flavour.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that encloses the fruit as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until the pastry is golden. Puff pastry needs a hot oven to rise and brown properly. Underbaking leaves it pale and soggy underneath, while the rhubarb releases juice that can soak the base if the crust is not set.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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