Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with rhubarb, pastry crust, egg white, sultana raisins, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Rhubarb and raisin work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie dish with pastry.

  3. Brush the pastry with egg white.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the dish with raw rhubarb and scatter sultana raisins among the fruit.

  2. Sweeten generously.

  3. Cover with a top crust and bake.

  4. Brush with egg white while hot and close the oven door to glaze the crust.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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 + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + raisintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart fruit filling that forms the body of the pie.
Egg white
Brushed on the crust to promote browning and a glossy finish.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps balance its acidity.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy sweetness and small pockets of concentrated fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Brushing the crust with egg white while hot. Egg white proteins set and turn golden as the crust bakes, so brushing it on while the pie is hot helps it glaze evenly and gives a glossy, browned surface.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, raisin, sugar. 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.

More rhubarb pie recipes

Strawberry 5 See all 198 →

You might also like

Rhubarb MarmaladeRhubarb Marmalade35 recipesRhubarb JellyRhubarb Jelly28 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes