Skip to main content
Dessert

To Prepare Rhubarb

A sweetened rhubarb compote flavored with lemon and nutmeg, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

To Prepare Rhubarb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer stringy skin from the rhubarb.

  2. Cut the rhubarb into 1-inch pieces.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the rhubarb, water, sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Simmer gently until the rhubarb is tender.

  3. Stir in the butter and nutmeg before serving.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 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
Breaks down into the soft, tart body of the compote as it simmers.
Sugar
Sweetens and balances the sharp tartness of the rhubarb.
Lemon
Adds brightness and acidity that lifts the flavour of the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the end.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

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