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Dessert

Rhubarb, Peach, or Apple Pie

A fruit pie made with rhubarb, peaches, or apples, sweetened with sugar and flavored with nutmeg or cinnamon, baked in a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Rhubarb, Peach, or Apple Pie

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Peel the fruit and slice it.

  3. Prepare the under crust in the saucers.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill deep saucers with the fruit.

  2. Sprinkle the fruit with sugar, dredge it with flour, and dust it with nutmeg or cinnamon.

  3. Cut rhubarb into 1-inch pieces and mix it with 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  4. Place the rhubarb mixture in the saucers.

  5. Cover with the upper crust.

  6. Bake until golden brown.

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. Apple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

  2. Rhubarb + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rhubarb + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fruit (in the method)
Provides the main filling, along with its natural sweetness and tartness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and draws out juices that help form a syrup.
Flour
Thickens the juices so the filling sets rather than running out.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the filling with flour. Flour must be evenly mixed with the sugar and fruit so the juices thicken as they heat. Unevenly distributed flour can leave pockets of runny filling or raw starch taste.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, peach, flour, nutmeg. 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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