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Dessert

Rhubarb Preserve

A sweet preserve made from sliced rhubarb cooked with sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rhubarb Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Peel and slice the rhubarb.

  2. Place it in a porcelain kettle and heat gradually until the juice flows freely; do not add water.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove half the juice and keep it warm.

Make the preserve

  1. Add sugar, cloves, and cinnamon to the cooked rhubarb and stir well.

  2. Cook until thick, adding warm juice if too thick.

Jar and store

  1. Pour into glass jars, screw on the tops, and when cool, wrap in thick paper and store in a cool, dry place.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Rhubarb + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Rhubarb + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 main bulk and tart flavour, and its juice gives the preserve moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the preserve.
Cloves
Adds a pungent, warm aroma that complements the cinnamon.

The step that matters

Cook until thick, adding warm juice if too thick. Sugar and fruit must cook down to the right thickness; too little cooking leaves the preserve runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking makes it stiff and dense. Adding warm reserved juice lets you adjust consistency gradually.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon. 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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