Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Sauce

A sauce made from rhubarb, water, and sugar, simmered until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rhubarb and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,852 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Rhubarb Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Strip the thin skin from the rhubarb.

  2. Wash the rhubarb pieces and place them in a saucepan.

  3. Cover with boiling water and let sit for 1 hour.

  4. Pour off the water.

Cook the sauce

  1. Add ½ cup of water and 1 cup of sugar to the rhubarb.

  2. Stew quickly until soft.

  3. Cool in an earthen dish.

  4. Optionally, cover with a plate and bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart flavour and breaks down into the sauce's body as it softens.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharp acidity of the rhubarb.

The step that matters

Stew quickly until soft. Rhubarb turns stringy and dull-coloured if cooked too long, so it should be stewed briefly just until the pieces collapse.

“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.

You might also like

Rhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesRhubarb MarmaladeRhubarb Marmalade35 recipesRhubarb JellyRhubarb Jelly28 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes