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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A pie made with rhubarb, sugar, butter, flour, and half an orange, baked between two crusts.

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

Why it works: Rhubarb and orange work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 299 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Peel the rhubarb stalks and cut them into ½ inch pieces.

  2. Pour boiling water over the rhubarb and let it cool.

Make the filling

  1. Once cool, mix in sugar, a little butter, and a sprinkling of flour.

  2. Add the juice of half an orange for flavor.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the mixture between two pie crusts.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 tart flavor and the bulk of the pie filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the rhubarb's tartness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor in the filling.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the rhubarb so the filling sets.
Orange
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma to the rhubarb.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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