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Dessert

Rhubarb Pudding

A bread pudding made with rhubarb, bread slices, brown sugar, eggs, and flavored with lemon or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the rhubarb stalks as you would for pies.

  2. Butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with slices of bread.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the rhubarb on top and sprinkle with brown sugar.

  2. Add another layer of bread and repeat until the dish is filled.

  3. Beat the eggs with some pulverized sugar and pour over the pudding.

  4. Flavor with lemon or nutmeg.

  5. Bake covered at first, then remove the cover 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. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rhubarb + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Eggs
Bind the custard and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Slices of bread
Form the soft body of the pudding that soaks up the custard.
Rhubarb stalks
Add tart flavor and moisture to the layers.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note to the rhubarb layers.

The step that matters

Bake covered at first, then uncover to brown. Covering traps steam so the custard sets gently without drying out. Uncovering later lets surface sugars and proteins brown. Removing the cover too early can leave the top dry, while leaving it on too long can leave the top pale and soft.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, lemon. 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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