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Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with sliced rhubarb, sugar, salt, flour, and pie crust.

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 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 ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Select red rhubarb stalks that have grown in the sun and cut them where the leaves begin.

  2. Strip off the outer skin and cut the rhubarb into pieces about ½ inch long.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with the pie crust and add a layer of rhubarb nearly an inch deep.

  2. Sprinkle the rhubarb with sugar, salt, and a little flour.

  3. Cover with another crust.

  4. Make a slit in the center.

  5. Trim the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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

Red rhubarb stalks
Provide the tart, fibrous fruit that forms the pie's filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps draw out its juices as it cooks.
Flour
Sprinkled over the rhubarb to thicken the juices released during baking.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling in a shell above and below.

The step that matters

Slit the top crust. The slit lets steam escape while the filling bakes. Without it, pressure builds under the top crust and can lift or split it and make the filling soggy.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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