Skip to main content
Dessert

Raisin and Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with raisins, rhubarb, sugar, lemon rind, and egg yolks, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Raisin and Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the pits from the raisins and chop them finely.

  2. Chop the rhubarb.

  3. Combine the chopped rhubarb with the sugar and grated lemon rind in a saucepan.

  4. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

  5. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  6. Stir in the egg yolks and mix well.

  7. Let the filling cool thoroughly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the cooled filling into a pre-baked pie shell.

  2. Top the pie with meringue.

  3. Brown the meringue in the oven.

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. Raisin + rhubarbtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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 flavor and bulk that forms the body of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juice from the rhubarb as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness when stirred into the cooked mixture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating when heated. Adding them to a hot mixture off the heat, then mixing well, helps keep them smooth rather than scrambled in lumps.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, lemon, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes