Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with stewed rhubarb, sugar, nutmeg, butter, lemon juice, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the rhubarb in water and sugar, adding nutmeg, butter, and lemon juice.

  2. Fill a pie plate with the crust and then add the stewed rhubarb.

  3. Sprinkle additional sugar on top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) with or without a crust cover.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Rhubarb + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart main body of the filling once stewed.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps it soften and form a syrup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stewing the rhubarb. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid as it cooks. Cooking it until it is tender and partly thickened before filling helps prevent a soggy crust and a runny pie.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, butter, lemon. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes