Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon and Rhubarb Jam

A jam made from rhubarb, sugar, lemon zest, bitter almonds, and lemon juice.

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

Why it works: Rhubarb and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon and Rhubarb Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the jam

  1. Combine rhubarb, sugar, lemon zest, and bitter almonds in a saucepan.

  2. Boil gently, stirring often, for 30 minutes.

  3. Add lemon juice and boil a little longer until thick.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the jam into jars, removing the almonds before sealing.

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. Rhubarb + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Forms the body of the jam and provides its tart flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken as it cooks.
Lemon
Its acidity balances the sweetness and helps the pectin set.
Bitter almonds
Adds a bitter, almond aroma that flavors the jam.

The step that matters

Boiling until thick after adding the lemon juice. Sugar, acid, and pectin must reach the right concentration to gel. Stopping too early leaves the jam runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and dull.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, almond. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes