Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Tart

A tart made with rhubarb, lemon, sugar, and short pastry crust.

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

Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line the tart pan with short pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the rhubarb pieces with the grated lemon.

  2. Add sugar to the rhubarb mixture, without adding water.

Bake

  1. Brush the top with the beaten egg white.

  2. Sift sugar over the tart before baking.

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Rhubarb + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 main filling and its sharp, tart flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the rhubarb's acidity.
Lemon
Adds bright aroma and extra acidity to the rhubarb.
Short pastry
Forms the crisp shell that holds the filling.
Egg white
Glazes the top, promoting browning and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Add sugar without water. Sugar draws moisture out of the rhubarb, forming a syrup that thickens the filling. Adding water would thin this syrup and can leave the crust soggy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes