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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with rhubarb, raisins, and sugar, topped with a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Rhubarb and raisin work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a pie dish with the pastry.

  3. Brush the pastry with egg white.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the dish with the rhubarb and scatter the sultana raisins among the fruit.

  2. Sweeten generously with sugar.

  3. Cover with a top crust and bake until golden.

  4. Brush the top with egg white while hot to glaze the crust.

Serve

  1. Let it cool before serving.

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 + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + raisintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart fruit base that gives the pie its main flavour and filling bulk.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps balance its acidity.
Egg white
Brushed on the crust to add a glossy, golden browned finish.
Sultana raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture among the fruit.

The step that matters

Let it cool before serving.. Rhubarb releases a lot of juice as it cooks, and the filling thickens only as it cools. Cutting too early lets the juices run out and leaves the filling runny.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

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