Name: Baked Rhubarb
Ingredients: 3 cups rhubarb, skinned and cut up; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon flour

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 ↓

Baked Rhubarb

Ingredients

3 cups rhubarb, skinned and cut up
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon flour

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Place the rhubarb in an earthen dish.
Add the sugar and sprinkle with flour.

Bake and serve

Cover the dish and bake for about 30 minutes.
Serve with meats or use in tart shells for dessert.

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.

Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together670 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb: Provides the tart flavour and the main body of the dish as it softens and releases juice.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps draw out juice as it bakes.
Flour: Thickens the juices that the rhubarb releases during baking.