Name: Pie Plant Pie
Ingredients: pie plant (rhubarb); ½ cup sugar; 1 tablespoon water; short crust pastry for top cover

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 ↓

Pie Plant Pie

Ingredients

pie plant (rhubarb)
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon water
short crust pastry for top cover

Directions

Prepare the filling

Cut the pie plant into 1-inch lengths.
Fill a deep dish with the pie plant.
Sweeten with sugar and add water.

Cover and bake

Cover with short crust pastry and bake until golden.

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.

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 bulk and sharp tartness that the filling is built around.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart rhubarb and balances its sharpness.
Short crust pastry: Forms a top crust that seals the filling and browns in the oven.

“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.