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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with chopped rhubarb, sugar, egg, and optional butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rhubarb 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 rhubarb

  1. Chop the rhubarb finely and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Squeeze out the juice from the rhubarb.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 cup of the rhubarb pulp, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 egg until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Add butter to the mixture if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Rhubarb + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 bulk of the pie filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the rhubarb's tartness.
Egg
Binds the filling and helps it set when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smoother, more tender filling.

The step that matters

Squeeze out the rhubarb juice. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid. Excess moisture stops the egg mixture from setting properly and can leave the pie watery and soggy.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

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