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Dessert

Rhubarb Tart

A tart made with stewed rhubarb, sugar, butter, eggs, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg 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 Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Skin the rhubarb stalks and cut them into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Place the rhubarb in a saucepan with a few spoonfuls of water and stew until soft.

  3. Sweeten the rhubarb while hot.

Assemble the tart

  1. Stir in 2 teaspoons of butter and 1 beaten egg for each cup of fruit.

  2. Pour the mixture into an open pie crust washed with egg white.

  3. Optionally, bake with a top crust alone.

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. Butter + eggtop 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 stalks
Provides the tart fruit flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the stewed rhubarb, balancing its natural sourness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the filling's texture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set when baked.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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