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Spiced Rhubarb

A preserved rhubarb dish flavored with sugar, vinegar, cloves, ginger, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Rhubarb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Sprinkle sliced rhubarb with 2 pounds of sugar and let it stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the syrup into a preserve kettle.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar and 1 cup of vinegar to the syrup and heat over the fire.

  2. Tie cloves, ginger root, and cinnamon in a muslin bag and add to the syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup until it thickens, then skim out the spice bag.

Cook and store

  1. Add the rhubarb to the syrup and cook until clear.

  2. Carefully transfer the rhubarb to jars for storage.

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.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Rhubarb + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the main body and tart flavor of the preserve.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the rhubarb and thickens the syrup, while preserving the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and helps balance its sweetness.
Whole cloves
Infuse warm, aromatic spice into the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it thickens. Boiling concentrates the sugar syrup so it sets properly and keeps the rhubarb preserved. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more readily, while overcooking can make the syrup too stiff.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup, vinegar, clove, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, vinegar, clove, ginger, cinnamon. 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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