Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Jam

A jam made from rhubarb, sugar, lemon and orange, with optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rhubarb Jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine rhubarb, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, orange juice, and orange rind in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add nuts to taste before removing from heat.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Rhubarb + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 base and fibrous body that the jam sets around as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin and heat, helps it thicken and set.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, lemon, orange. 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.

More rhubarb jam recipes

Green 3Lemon 3 See all 107 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes