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Rhubarb Meringues

A pie crust filled with rhubarb and meringue, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and rhubarb 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 ↓

Rhubarb Meringues

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a pie pan with the pastry crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, chopped rhubarb, egg yolks, and water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined pie pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Top and brown

  1. While the filling is baking, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form to make the meringue.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked rhubarb filling and return to the oven to brown.

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. Flour + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + rhubarbtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling so it sets smoothly as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and sets as it browns.
Flour
Thickens the rhubarb filling so it holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Rhubarb
Provides the tart fruit flavor and bulk of the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks with no trace of fat or yolk, because proteins trap air to form a stable foam. Underwhipped or greasy whites deflate and weep, so the meringue will not hold up when it returns to the oven.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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.

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