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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with fresh rhubarb, flour, sugar, egg, lemon juice, butter, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Rhubarb and flour 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 Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the flour and sugar together in a bowl.

  3. Add the egg, lemon juice, and rhubarb to the mixture and combine well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the pastry and cover the pie pan with it.

  2. Pour the rhubarb mixture into the pie crust and dot with butter.

  3. Roll out the upper crust, cover the pie, and press the edges together.

  4. Brush the edges with cold water to seal.

  5. Brush the top with cream and bake for 35 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 the bulk of the filling.
Egg
Binds the filling and helps it set as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the rhubarb so the filling holds together.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the rhubarb.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling as it melts during baking.

The step that matters

Sealing the top crust edges. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid as it bakes. If the edges are not well sealed, juices can escape and leak out, leaving the filling thin and the crust soggy.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, lemon, 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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