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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with rhubarb, sugar, eggs, flour, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Rhubarb and orange work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 299 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. 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. Mix rhubarb, sugar, egg yolks, and flour together.

  2. Let the mixture stand for a few minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and finish

  1. Whip the egg whites.

  2. Add orange flavoring to the whipped egg whites to make meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  4. Return the pie to the oven to brown lightly.

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 + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 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. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 that the sugar balances.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the rhubarb's tartness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set during baking.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Returning the pie to the oven to brown the meringue. Meringue can weep or turn tough if overbaked, and it browns quickly. Watch it closely and stop once lightly golden so the filling stays soft and the topping stays tender.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

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