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Dessert

Rhubarb Lemon Pie

A pie made with stewed rhubarb, sugar, lemon, and eggs, topped with a frosted egg white and sugar.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the stewed rhubarb, sugar, lemon juice, and egg yolks together.

  2. Leave out the white of 1 egg.

  3. Beat the egg white with 2 tablespoons of sugar for frosting.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Frost the pie with the beaten egg white and sugar, then lightly brown in the oven.

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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
Egg yolks thicken the filling as it sets, and the beaten white forms the light topping.
Stewed rhubarb
Provides the main filling body and tart flavour, along with moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the frosting brown in the oven.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Lightly browning the frosting. Egg white and sugar meringue can go from pale to scorched quickly in a hot oven, because sugar browns fast at high heat. Watch closely and stop as soon as the top is golden.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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