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Dessert

Rhubarb, Pbach, or Apple Pie

A fruit pie made with rhubarb, peach, or apple, sweetened with sugar and thickened with flour, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 177 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb, Pbach, or Apple Pie

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.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Peel and slice the fruit (rhubarb, apples, or peaches) and fill deep saucers with it.

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

  4. For rhubarb, mix it with sugar and flour, then place it in the pie crust.

Bake

  1. Cover with the top crust, seal the edges, and bake until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart flavor and releases juice that forms the filling's body.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice that becomes part of the filling.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the fruit juices so the filling holds together when sliced.
Greening apples
Add tartness and firm texture to the filling.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Coat the fruit with flour and sugar before filling. Rhubarb and other fruit release a lot of liquid as they bake. Flour and sugar mixed in first absorb and thicken that juice, so the filling sets rather than running out of the pie.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, 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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