Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A pie filled with rhubarb, sugar, eggs, butter, flour, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Rhubarb and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pour boiling water over the chopped rhubarb and let it sit for 4-5 minutes, then drain the water.

  2. In a bowl, mix the drained rhubarb with sugar, egg yolks, butter, and flour.

  3. Moisten the mixture with water and pour it into the lower pie crust.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add sugar to make a meringue.

  2. Spread the meringue over the top of the pie and return it to the oven to brown.

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. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 tart flavour and the bulk of the pie's filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp taste of the rhubarb.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that gives a light, airy topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Draining the rhubarb after scalding. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid as it cooks. Draining it after the brief soak keeps the filling from becoming watery, so it sets properly under the crust and meringue.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, flour. 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

Rhubarb MarmaladeRhubarb Marmalade35 recipesRhubarb JellyRhubarb Jelly28 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes