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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie with rhubarb, sugar, mace, butter, and a crust, glazed with beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cook the rhubarb in a saucepan with sugar and mace until soft.

  2. Stir in the butter and let the mixture cool.

Assemble and glaze

  1. Line a pie plate with the crust and wet the rim.

  2. Add the cooled rhubarb mixture to the crust.

  3. Cut the top crust into diamond shapes and place it over the filling.

  4. Seal the edges and brush with beaten egg.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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 tart flavor and the bulk of the filling once cooked soft.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps draw out its juices as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked filling.
Egg
Brushed on top to give the crust a glossy, browned finish.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding it to the crust. Hot filling softens the raw pastry and can make the bottom crust soggy and under-baked. Cooling first helps the crust hold its shape and bake crisp.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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