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Dessert

Pie Plant Pie

A custard pie made from rhubarb, sugar, flour, eggs, lemon rind, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pie Plant Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the pie plant into small pieces.

  2. Add sugar to taste and stew until tender.

  3. Once cool, mix in flour, egg yolks, and lemon rind.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the mixture as a custard pie at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a meringue with egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. After baking the pie, add the meringue and return to the oven for a few moments 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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Pie plant (rhubarb)
Provides the tart flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as it bakes, giving it a custard-like set.
Egg whites
Whipped into the meringue, giving it volume and a light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps soften it as it stews.
Flour
Adds body to the filling so it holds together when sliced.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. The meringue needs only a few moments in the oven. Too long and it over-browns or weeps, since sugar caramelises quickly at high heat and egg proteins toughen and draw out liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, flour, 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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